


The Wonders of the London Housing Market

by tarlie



Category: Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: (sort of), Alastair's nightmares about Blair and Brown, And Peter's crushes on Tony and Gordon, Fake Marriage, Featuring expensive wedding rings, Gordon's amazingly resilient sexual repression, M/M, Non-political AU, The team behind Record Shop AU return with the horrible cliche you all needed:, Tony milking it for all it's worth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 20:52:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14838960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarlie/pseuds/tarlie
Summary: “No, Gordon.” Peter sounds exasperated now. “Tony is, sadly, even more committed to this absurd, fraudulent, and potentially dangerous bit of playacting than you are.” He’s doing a look, the one that suggests a layer of meaning under his words that Gordon is failing to dig out, but Gordon can’t deny that he’s right; Tony has taken to the charade with the usual delight with which Tony always takes to profoundly complex and morally dubious situations.





	The Wonders of the London Housing Market

Tony is half an hour late. Again. The wanker. The idea that _other_ people might have schedules has apparently never crossed his mind; Gordon has a lecture to give at four, and there’s only just enough time to do this. Had only just been enough time to do this. Isn’t enough time to do this, now. Gordon glares at the tabletop and tries to relax his clenched jaw a little.

It doesn’t help they’re still midway through their latest cataclysmic, earth-shaking, friendship-ending row. Not even Peter can remember how this one started, though Gordon’s fairly sure he can trace it back to Tony’s godawful opinions about British membership of the Euro and Tony’s pig-headed refusal to back down even when Gordon had _explained_ how wrong he was and – well. Back to Tony, really. That’s just how it goes for them. At least they’re not still awkwardly navigating the same workplace, the same tiny fucking cubicle they met in, the same building crumbling around them.

Gordon had been a research assistant, Tony on the legal team, and both of them little more than kids, bright young twentysomethings trying not to starve. They’ve both moved on to better things since then, but it’s funny to remember that they’d used to spend all week breathing each other’s air without fighting once. Without even minding once. Back then, the only thing Gordon had minded was when Tony _wasn’t_ there. They’d enmeshed their respective lives so closely that nobody quite knew which was whose, let alone how to go about disentangling them.

Gordon is thirty-two now, and Tony not much younger, and they don’t spend every waking moment together any more, but Gordon is still aware that when they aren’t screaming at each other, they’re laughing, or plotting, or just happy. That’s how they spend their lives; fighting each other’s battles or simply fighting each other.

Peter was fond of saying that they’d been everything to each other but lovers, so they were bound to eventually cross that bridge too, if only to finally accomplish their dream of never having to interact with anyone but each other and the occasional supermarket checkout girl. Tony had always laughed, of course, and joked that he’d be game for some bridge-crossing, should Gordon ever threaten to date someone truly awful, like a Eurosceptic, or a girl opposed to PFI contracts just on principle.

He wishes he hadn’t remembered that. Not just now. This is going to be bad enough already.

Tony has spotted him from the other side of the café, and weaves through the tables towards him carrying a drink too tall, too elaborate and too… young.  He looks too cheerful for anyone with his working hours and his sleeping habits, both of which Gordon knows, because - for reasons Gordon can never quite recall - they know everythingabout each other.

They know about each other’s pills (Melatonin to get Tony to sleep; Prozac to get Gordon out of bed). They know about each other’s religious scruples (Tony thinks the Catholic Church is wrong about homosexuality; Gordon worries that it’s not). They know about each other’s work (Tony delivers atrocious cases brilliantly to his clients; Gordon delivers brilliant lectures atrociously to his students), love lives (sort of seeing someone; mostly not), music preferences (Rolling Stones; Bach), and politics (bad; worse). Knowing each other so well has only ever made the fighting worse.

“Hey,” says Tony with a careful smile, dropping carelessly into the seat opposite him. Gordon points at his watch. Tony shrugs.

“Yeah, sorry,” he says, amused. “You know what it’s like.” His expression sobers as he studies Gordon’s face. “Is that what you're angry about? Or is it something else?”

“I’m not _angry_ ,” Gordon snarls, furious, but his phone buzzes, and he pulls it out, grateful for the distraction. Ed has questions about his dissertation, and complaints about Other Ed, who has been, quote, ‘a bloody nightmare’ to work with since Ed started dating Other Ed’s flatmate. Gordon doesn’t smile, but he feels a little calmer as he pockets the phone.

“You seem angry,” Tony comments, chewing thoughtfully on his pistachio croissant.

“I’m _not_.”  

“You sure? Because I am a Gordon expert. I can tell when you’re nervous, Gordon, and I haven’t seen you look so nervous since we thought Whelan had actually managed to get Peter murdered.”

“No,” he lies. “Not nervous, no.”

For want of a better excuse, he starts to tap out a response to Ed. Both of the Eds are halfway through their PhDs, and both are promising to return excellent theses. Gordon couldn’t care less about their personal drama, but if it’s about to threaten their work –

“Goodness,” Tony comments slowly, halfway through his croissant. “Did you ask to meet up just because you felt like ignoring me in person rather than online?”

“No.” He puts the phone back in his pocket again, but can’t quite lift his eyes to meet Tony’s. Instead, he stares at the knots in the table wood, and the empty coffee-cup, and says nothing.

“So what are we doing?” Tony is still polite; he usually is, unless pushed, or remotely in the vicinity of Charlie Whelan, but when Gordon ignores him Tony will prod for a fight just to get his attention. “Aside from enjoying these lovely croissants?”

Gordon swallows.

“Can you just – can you please not make this harder than it already is?” he asks quietly, eyes still fixed on the table. He winces at how evident the distress in his voice is.

Tony blinks, the fine lines around his eyes deepening a little with concern, and puts the remnants of the croissant down. He knows Gordon hates to ask for help.

“I want to know–” he struggles momentarily to find the words. “I want to know if you’re willing to marry.” He grits out the final word between his teeth. “Me.”

Tony doesn’t blink at all. For a moment, he sits like the world’s most accurate waxwork of himself as Gordon’s heart hammers uncomfortably. He’s about to take it back, shrug it off, when Tony speaks.

“Pardon me?”

“I need you to marry me. As a favour,” he says quickly. He can feel his face turning red when Tony laughs.

“Well, if it’s as a _favour_ …”

“Oh, fuck off. Forget about it. I’ll just–”

“What? Gordon, _you’re_ the one who just proposed,” Tony frowns, running his fingertips through his hair. “Is this some sort of joke? Listen, I forgive you for being a shit this last fortnight, but for God’s sake don’t start trying to do jokes.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“Right.” He looks unsure, but Gordon's expression must change, because Tony suddenly leans forward in alarm. “It’s really not a joke?”

“No.”

Tony glances over his shoulder at the near-empty café.

“Charlie Whelan isn't going to jump out from behind the counter to laugh at me?”

“No.”

“And it's not about getting new material for Damian’s blackmail file? The one you pretend not to know about?”

“I _don’t_ know about it.” And he doesn’t; just because ten or twelve or fifteen people repeat the same rumour at you, it’s not evidence. It’s not _knowing_. “So no.”

He hopes that’s the end of it, so of course Tony decides to keep going.

“And it's not for–”

“Please stop asking me about my fucking friends, Tony.”

“Ok.” Tony considers this. Gordon watches him turn it over in his mind, and watches him warily decides to accept the premise. “So,” he says, cautious. “You suddenly need to marry someone urgently?”

“You,” Gordon corrects him.

“Sorry?”

“I need to marry _you_ ,” he says, gruff. “Not just someone.”

Tony leans back into his chair, a slow smile appearing on his face. Gordon tries not to think about punching it off.

“Well, of course you do, but get in line, Gor–”

“Can you just _stop_?” Gordon barks. The smile vanishes. Gordon breathes hard and tries again. “Do you remember when I was looking for a place?”

“Yes.”

“You helped me search. We found my flat.”

“Yes.”

“And you came to the interview. As my lawyer.”

“Yes, Gordon, I haven’t suddenly lost my memory of the last four years. Where’s this going?”

Gordon sighs.

“Remember the old lady who owned it?”

“Uh, mostly. Kind of sweet. Lives in Italy?”

“Spain.”

“Yeah, that was it.”

“And there were people, lots of people, interested in it because the rent was so low. But she told me– when I moved in– she wanted us. You, I mean. She really liked you.”

“Me,” Tony agrees, comprehension spreading across his face. “Me. Your _husband_ , Tony.”

The bastard is _enjoying_ this.

“It happened a lot," Gordon points out, “people thought that a lot about us, back then.”

“I remember,” Tony agrees easily. “Made it a nightmare, trying to pull.”

“Well,” Gordon snaps, stung, “maybe if you’d stopped _touching_ me all the time, or flirted less, or not gone around telling people we were married, or –”

“Right, of course,” Tony nods solemnly. “It’s my fault you decided to take advantage of a little old lady. How silly of me.”

He hates this little shit. He hadn’t meant to take advantage. Ruthlessness belongs in academia, not in real life. He maneuvers around intellectual rivals, not little old ladies who mistake Tony Blair for a man who means anything he says.

“I was going to tell her,” he protests. “That it was a mistake. But Tony – her brother, he was gay, she told me, the family treated him like shit, she was the only one who spoke to him, and he died before – well, you know, before marriage came in, and she was telling me all of this, and she was crying, and I couldn’t – you know how I get – that time I called that lady a bigot – she was _crying_ , Tony, she said it meant a lot to her to see us happy,” he knows he’s rambling, but he wants Tony to understand. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“And you sat tight and thought about how cheap the rent was and let her think what she liked?” Tony asks, one eyebrow raised.

“It wasn’t about the fucking _rent_ ,” he snarls. He’s losing his fucking patience with this. Stupid fucking idea. He slams a fist into the table.

It hurts. Quite a lot. He winces. Tony takes his hand over the table, turning it clinically as he assesses the damage. Other patrons are darting disapproving glances in their direction.

“You ok?” Tony asks, quietly. Gordon grunts assent, pulling his hand back and rubbing at the bruised fist. “Ok.” His voice steadies. “So you couldn’t tell her. And when the contract was signed?”

God, he’s going to be smug.

“I put your name on it.”  
  
Tony beams like fucking sunshine.

“Oh, _Gordon_.”

“Fuck off.”

“Mr. Holier-Than-Thou, I didn’t think you had it in you.” He grins around a mouthful of croissant. “That’s fraud, by the way.”

“I know what it is. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Uh, darling, don’t start nagging before our wedding day. No marital privileges yet.” His smile is threatening to swallow his entire face now. Gordon thinks of cats playing with half-dead rodents. He regrets this already. “So, sweetheart, how does it feel being on the wrong side of the law?”

“Fuck _off_ , Tony.”

“God,” Tony marvels. “You committed a _crime_ to avoid social embarrassment. How did you survive before Peter and I arrived to take care of you?”

Gordon doesn’t reply; he folds his arms over his chest and glares at his empty coffee cup. Tony is obviously enjoying himself tremendously now. He finishes his croissant before carrying on.

“Is she back in the country, then? Wants to see the lovebirds in her nest? Her out-and-proud boys? Her happily married gays?” He’s spot on, of course, and knows it, because he pretends to reflect on it for a moment. “ _Are_ we gay, by the way? Because Peter tells me not to engage in bi-erasure.”

“Very funny, Tony”

“I mean, we’ll have to keep the lovemaking to a minimum. You do get loud, sweetie, and she shouldn’t have to hear that, at her age.”

Gordon glowers furiously at the sugar bowl and rues the day he’d brought a girl back to Tony’s. The next day Tony had been as insufferably smug as though _he’d_ been the one who’d got laid, flipping them pancakes for breakfast and chatting away to her as though they’d been friends for years, and then had never, ever let Gordon forget it.

But Tony is having too much fun to stop there.

“But other than that, easy. We invite her for a few dinners, hold hands a bit, talk about how blissfully happy we are, she feels the cosmic balance of justice has been restored on behalf of her dearly departed brother and goes back to her Spanish villa to shuffle her way towards the end of the mortal coil surrounded by sunshine and moral righteousness.”

“You’re fucking exhausting.”

“I’m also right.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Maybe,” Tony replies, simply. Gordon grits his teeth

“What does that mean?”

“It means I want to see the fine print. How long is this for?”

“Uh, two weeks.” He doesn’t actually know. Two weeks sounds right; she’s too old to travel for long. She’s only in the country at all to see her granddaughter’s newborn. “Maybe less.”

Tony’s eyes narrow.

“You don’t actually know.”

“Definitely less than month,” Gordon insists.

“Does she know anything else about me?”

“That you’re a lawyer.” Gordon tries to recall the handful of conversations they’d had. “That you’re English. And that you like Mick Jagger.”

“Oh, so she has two out of three right, then.”  

“You are _not_ fucking Sc–”

“Now, now, darling,” Tony interrupts, infuriatingly doe-eyed, his voice syrupy. “Be gentle with me. Will I have to leave my stuff at yours?”

“Probably. Some of it.” Gordon shrugs. It’s the sort of thing he’d be bothered about, with a lover, but Tony has had his own corner of Gordon’s wardrobe for years, keeps his favourite coffee mug on Gordon’s draining-board, and has always been generous about lending books that Gordon always forgets to return. “Probably not much. You already have a toothbrush at mine. And your fancy shampoo.”

“Yeah, true.” He looks thoughtful, stirring cream into the coffee-impersonating monstrosity of a drink in front of him.

“Ok. One last question.” He looks Gordon in the eye. “Why did you ask me to go house-hunting with you, that day?”

 _Oh, fuck you,_ Gordon thinks, for the hundredth time that morning.

“Because of my eyesight. You know I can’t always see if there’s problems with floors or ceilings, or–”

“Right. But why _me_? Instead of, you know, Peter. Or Sue. Or any of those awful people you call your friends.”

Gordon doesn’t want to have to say this.

“You know why.”

“I do,” Tony agrees, smiling. “But I want to hear you say it.”

“Fuck the _fuck_ off.”

“Sure. Have fun being evicted and sued for fraud, honey.” He examines his fingernails a moment, trying not to grin. “I do offer some very reasonable rates for defence cases of that sort, you know.”

If his hand hadn’t already been sore, Gordon thinks he’d have hit the table again.

“I chose you, you wanker,” he snarls, “Because, at the time–”

“And now,” Tony corrects him, gently.

“ _At the time,_ ” he repeats, trying not to shake with fury, “you were my best friend.”

This, of course, amuses Tony hugely; his shoulders shake and his head drops back with the force of his laughter. He tries to catch his breath several times before lapsing back into giggling fits. Gordon can’t even be furious at it. Tony will consider this his victory of victories, the memory he’ll console himself with through every fight, on the days Gordon tries to ignore him to spend time with Peter or his students, better even than the time Gordon had had too much to drink and accidentally texted _I love you_ , because this was won fair and square and without plausible deniability.

“God,” Tony says, when his fit of giggles is over. “Well, that was a high. Of course I’ll do it, Gordon.”

“You will?” he asks, a little suspicious.

“Yes.” And then, because Tony is a bastard, he raises his voice, shrill and dramatic and perfectly designed to catch the attention of the entire room. “Yes, _yes_! A thousand times yes, you stupid, beautiful man, of course I’ll marry you!”

The rest of the café’s patrons are staring; several burst into applause. Tony even summons up some crocodile tears as he beams around the room, the theatrical bastard. Gordon wonders how on earth he has managed to end up in his own personal version of Hell.

He’d thought you were supposed to die first.

 

* * *

 

She’s due in the country on Saturday, so he’s insisted Tony move in on the Friday. Tony had promised to consult his work schedule, which is Blair for ‘Saturday’, but Gordon is too busy trying to deal with the Eds to start a fight over it, even when Tony appears on his doorstep with a box of his things, looking cheery but exhausted, early on Saturday afternoon. Gordon even carries the box inside for him, praying fervently that they won’t be caught in the act.

“Aren’t you going to carry me over the threshold?” Tony asks as he follows him in.

“Why? You’ve been here a thousand times. You used to practically live here.”

“Maybe the Church is right about cohabitation before marriage destroying the magic,” he muses, laughing as he makes his way to the kitchen to locate his coffee mug. Gordon opens the box.

“What the fuck is this?”

“A photo, Gordon. Of me. Your eyesight hasn’t got worse, has it?”

“Why is this here?”

“For the bedroom.”

“I’m not sleeping with you looming over me like Big Brother.”

“Well, you’re sleeping with me next to you, so–” Tony falters a little as Gordon drops the photo, crossing his arms with a thunderous expression.

“Absolutely not,” he says, categorically.

“Oh, fine, you may be right,” Tony shrugs. “You sure you’ll be ok on the couch?”

Gordon gives him a look. Tony ignores it, pouring another coffee and meandering around the stacks of paper and books that litter the living room, pursing his lips in concentration as he tries to determine the most dramatic location to hang his picture. Gordon knows he’s doing it largely to annoy him, which is what annoys him the most.

“I’m sleeping in my bed,” he hisses.

“Well, so am I,” Tony says, brightly. “But if it doesn’t bother you, we could–”

“It’s my flat!”

“Yes,” Tony says, sweetly. “Which is why you’re letting me take the bed, rather than lose it.” Gordon glares at him. Tony, who often seems to take a perverse pleasure in giving in to Gordon over trinkets and trivialities, can be frustratingly unyielding when Gordon really wants something. Now, he glances back over his shoulder, making sure he has Gordon’s attention, before speaking again. “I’m sure it’s fine, though. I’ve heard it’s _really_ easy to find cheap accomodation in central London.”

Gordon doesn’t have a reply to that. He bites at the inside of his cheek, trying to find something to say.

“Well. Don’t–” He loses the thread of the thought, mumbling the rest. “Don’t get any ideas about getting even. From, you know. That time.”

“Jesus Christ.” Tony shakes his head, laughing. “Cross my heart, hope to die, promise I won’t shag anyone in your bed, Gordon. Happy?”

Gordon folds his arms more tightly about himself.

“And you can’t bring your girlfriend. Here.” he clarifies. “Ever.”

“Still not my girlfriend, Gordon,” Tony corrects, a little tiredly, just as he had done the last thousand or so times. He picks up one of Gordon’s books, leafing through it as he sprawls out on Gordon’s couch. “She’s just– a woman. She thinks I’m beautiful, insufficiently left-wing, and not quite as smart as her.” He glances up, his smile a little soft. He must like her, Gordon thinks. “Sort of like you, but with more Catholicism, and jokes, and sex.”

 _Christ_. Sex with Tony, and the Catholic Church. Just thinking about it is unpleasant. He pretends his face isn’t flushing slightly at how horrible it sounds. Which it does. It sounds terrible. He doesn't like the Catholic Church.

To hide his expression, he bolts for his bedroom, leaving Tony’s laptop and mobile charging by the bed, and adding the clothes Tony has brought to the drawer already full of his things. When he returns, he discovered that Tony has used the time to render himself shirtless and drape himself lazily across the sofa.

“Did you write this with Robin?” he asks, still leafing through Gordon’s book. “What’s he up to, these days?”

“Angling for my job,” he responds automatically, then averts his eyes. “Put a shirt on.”

Tony grins.

“Nice to know some things never change,” he says easily, standing and heading for the bathroom. Gordon hears the sound of water running.

“Do we have nicknames?”

“Sorry?” He can’t hear much over the noise of the bath.

“Does the mark think we have nicknames for each other?” Tony calls.

“No,” Gordon says, moving to stand by the bathroom door. “Don’t call her that. This isn’t a con.”

“I think we should have nicknames for each other,” Tony continues, warming to his theme. Gordon wonders if he can even hear him. “I always do that. It’s a very domestic thing.”

“No. And you’ve never had nicknames for girls before,” Gordon says, with exactly the same totality of conviction on both counts. “I would know.”

“I did!” He’s putting on his best mock-wounded voice. Gordon can imagine him doing the eyes with it.

“No,” he repeats. Tony continues as though he hasn’t heard. Maybe he hasn’t.

“I was thinking Honeybunch for me,” he calls, “And Captain Cuddles for you.”

Gordon grits his teeth and shoves the door open. Tony is already in the bath, apparently absorbed by his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. He doesn’t appear alarmed at Gordon’s sudden appearance; he’s never been modest, Gordon supposes, and they’ve barged in on each other changing several times before now, to his own mortification and Tony’s undisguised amusement.

“No nicknames,” Gordon orders. “Whatever bullshit you’re thinking. No to all of it.” Tony shrugs, reaching for the bottles perched on the side of the bathtub. “And do _not_ use my shampoo.”

Tony pouts.

“I need to keep my hair presentable.”

“Well, that’s obviously going to be a short-term problem,” Gordon mutters, almost to himself. Rather comically, Tony finally appears to feel self-conscious at that, flushing and touching the receding widow’s peak; Gordon suddenly feels like apologising. It’s easy to forget that Tony, in his strange way, is rather self-conscious too.

“Fine,” he mutters, slightly sullen. “Where’s mine?” Still averting his eyes, Gordon retrieves Tony’s hideously expensive shampoo from the cupboard he’d hidden it in last time Charlie had stayed over and throws it to him. “Thanks. And wash your dishes, Gordon, the kitchen’s so bad it even looks disgusting to _me_.”

Gordon’s guilt evaporates, and he slams the bathroom door as he leaves. Later, the room smells of Tony’s shampoo and Gordon’s soap; but it’s not unpleasant, so he doesn’t complain.

 

* * *

 

Gordon finishes reading a student dissertation on Keynes (beautifully written and utterly vacuous) before settling on the couch, pulling the duvet around him and checking his emails one last, absently compulsive time for the night. The landlady has failed to appear – doubtless enjoying being reunited with her family – so the rest of the evening has been reasonably uneventful; Other Ed is insisting that Ed is exaggerating, that he’d already sent the article, but been busy working on something for his father and that any change in working pace has _nothing_ to do with the fact Ed had ‘accidentally’ dropped Other Ed’s toothbrush into the toilet last time he’d slept at his and Yvette’s.

God, he thinks as he drifts towards sleep on the sofa, listening to his fake gay husband tapping out an email in his bedroom, these boys are strange.

“You could just sleep in here, you know,” Tony calls; he’s wide awake, working. He won’t, Gordon knows, go to bed until the small hours of the morning. If at all. “It wouldn’t be weird.”

“It would be weird for me,” Gordon points out, sleepily, and hears him laugh. The tapping stops, and he’s vaguely aware of Tony appearing in the doorway of the living room.

“You’re _so_ uptight,” he says, softly. “You do know I’ve heard about your university days from Peter, don't you? And about shagging the princess. I don’t know how...”

He trails off, and Gordon pretends not to have heard.

“Do you want tea?” Tony asks, moving towards the kitchen.

“No,” Gordon mumbles, half-asleep.

“Do you have milk?”

“No.”

Tony sighs loudly.

“I _like_ milk.”

Gordon grunts.

“You have absolutely nothing in the fridge,” Tony complains, oblivious to Gordon’s lack of interest, as he disappears back into the kitchen. “And, you know, two of the ramen noodles in the cupboard are out of date.”

He wanders back out into the living room, blowing on his tea to cool it, and Gordon turns his head to watch. He’s wearing very short shorts, and an old shirt of Gordon’s (to annoy him). His hair is messy and even more obviously thinning than usual; the dark circles under his eyes, often covered with makeup, are startling even in the lamplight. He looks… nice, Gordon would guess, if you liked that sort of thing. He’s not quite sure what that kind of thing is, exactly, but he assumes somebody must like it.

Tony has always looked good, in a doe-eyed, oddly girly way that had aged fairly well so far; he still looked a bit blithe and innocent sometimes, but his thinning hair and broadening chest has made him look rather less like a startled fawn than he had when they’d met. Gordon, shifting uncomfortably on the couch, remembers that he himself is aging awfully. He’s always looked older than his age, but it had been an asset as a boy. Now it seems his body is as unwieldy as his mind. Both had been quite good, once. The thought of both of them slipping away still further makes him feel slightly sick, and he sits up slowly, abandoning sleep.

“You shouldn’t fight with me,” Tony says quietly, watching him from the armchair as he sips his tea.

“You shouldn’t make me fight with you,” Gordon counters.

“You’re a mess without me,” Tony says, as though this isn’t a completely ridiculous assertion. “You eat terribly and you don’t clean this place when we’re fighting. Peter and Sue are too soft on you.”

“I’m an adult, Tony,” Gordon reminds him, needled by the parental tone of his concern.

“Yeah, well...”

“ _What_?”

“Just – you shouldn’t fight me,” Tony repeats, defensively. “Or resent that I make you eat. I’m trying to help you. Like you helped me.”

“I helped you?” Gordon can’t remember telling Tony to clean or to eat in his life.

“You know.” Tony gestures ambiguously, and Gordon stares, tired and confused. “I read more books about boring things now. Boring things that aren’t law, anyway.”

“Piketty isn’t boring.”

“He is.”

“Maybe if you don’t understand him.”

“I do. He’s _still_ boring.”

Gordon shakes his head, laughing in spite of himself. The anxious spiral of his earlier worries, he realises, has softened into the steady pendulum of conversation. Good. Comfortable. Familiar.

“Do you still hate your job?” he asks, settling back down against the cushions, because it’s been too long since they could talk without screaming, and their jobs were what they always talked about when they weren’t screaming at each other.

“No.” Tony says, sounding uncertain, and then exhales. “No,” he decides. “It’s stressful and the people are mostly horrible and everyone assumes I’m a monster. But I am good at it.”

“You are,” Gordon agrees, and smiles into the pillow when Tony laughs.

“I am good at it, or I am a monster?”

“Oh, both, definitely.” Tony laughs harder.

“And you know," he adds, "plenty of the cases I don’t agree with, and that’s tough, but it’s my job and the clients are relying on me.” He’s silent for a moment; Gordon realises he’s listening to a justification Tony has repeated a great deal in the privacy of his own mind. “And if it wasn’t me, they’d just find another lawyer, maybe one even less sympathetic to the people they’re suing, so why not me?”

Gordon, staring up at the ceiling, isn’t sure whether he pities or envies Tony’s ability to think this way.

“Do you believe that?” he asks, and if his voice seems rather gentle there’s nobody to say it might not just be with sleep.

Tony thinks this over.

“I feel happier now than in that stupid little firm,” he responds eventually, finishing his tea. “I like doing things _well_.” He puts the cup on the coffee table. “I don’t know. Do you think I should go back? Find somewhere small and righteous and irrelevant and boring? Move out of London and exhaust myself with incompetent idiots for the sake of bragging rights at parties?”

 _Yes,_ thinks Gordon, immediately.

“No, but–”

“I mean, I’m not sure I should be taking advice about this from you. You hate your job too. You wish you could go into politics.”

He did.

“I don’t.”

He did.

“You do, though,” Tony insists. “You told me.”

“I don’t hate my job. At all. And I hardly ever think about going into politics _now_ , anyway, come of it. I was a kid when I told you that.”

He’d been twenty-six, and he still thinks about going into politics constantly, and Tony, of course, is right; he hates his job. A little. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes an awful lot, for a very, very long time.

“Alright,” Tony says, throwing his hands up, entirely unconvinced. God, how did he ever let that idiot come to know him so uncomfortably well? But Tony is unfolding his limbs from the chair, and standing.

“Goodnight, Gordon,” he says, ruffling Gordon’s hair on his way out, which Gordon hates, and then flicking the lamp off before Gordon even thinks to ask, which makes up for it, more or less.

When Gordon falls asleep, he dreams they’re back working for that stupid little firm, and dreams of the strange, tense night he’d thought Tony was making a pass at him, and of wondering, as he had back then, _would it be the worst thing in the world?_ He dreams of afterwards, pretending nothing had happened and nothing had changed, and the half-formed thought of _would it be the worst thing in the world?_ Even now, sleeping on the couch for a month, Tony back in his home and his life as though time had wound impossibly back to that night, he can’t pretend the answer isn’t no.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up to what really might _actually_ be the worst thing in the world, because Peter Mandelson is smirking down at him. Worse, the man is brandishing a bottle of something green and vaguely menacing in a manner Gordon considers frankly threatening.

“Morning, dear,” Peter chirps, pushing the juice into Gordon’s hands the moment he sits up, rubbing his eyes blearily. “I heard you came over all matrimonially-minded yesterday.”

Gordon puts the juice on the table, eyeing it suspiciously.

“Fuck off,” he manages to mutter through a yawn. “What the fuck you doing here?”

“Charming to see you too, darling. The, hm, _other_ Mr. Brown let me in.”

God, Peter Mandelson. Nobody makes Tony look appealing more effectively. If Tony reminds Gordon of a cat playing with half-dead mice, Peter is the one smugly chewing off their little heads.

Though Peter is more of a dog person, Gordon remembers blearily, so he would probably resent the metaphor.

“Tony is up?” He asks. “It’s not even six yet.”

“He couldn’t sleep,” said Peter, frowning absently. “Went for a jog. Texted telling me to bring you this.”

He presses the juice back into Gordon’s hands; Gordon returns it to the table, frowning.

“He told you everything yesterday?”

“On Wednesday. Not sure if it was everything, though. The text read, quote, _finally tying the knot with big gb,_ smiley face, smiley face, halo emoji, sparkly heart, man dancing, unquote.”

“ _Jesus_.” Gordon yawns again. “I hate him.”

“You do,” Peter agrees amicably, handing him the drink again. “Drink it, Gordon. It’s got spinach in it.”

Gordon is at a loss to understand why this is supposed to be an incentive.

“You need the iron,” Peter explains.

He takes a sip. It’s _vile_. He gets up, puts the kettle on as he enters the kitchen, and promptly pours the lot down the sink.

“That cost £8,” Peter says, sadly.

“ _Eight_?” Gordon asks, wincing. “This city is insane. I’m leaving London. I’m joining the SNP in order to protest against the madness of a London-dominated Britain.”

“Right,” Peter agrees, solemnly. “In other news, I’ve found a charming girl I hope to make my wife.” Gordon laughs, before remembering that he hates Peter.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” he says, trying to disguise his smile. _Eight fucking pounds_ , he thinks drowsily. Maybe it really was time to bring down capitalism. “Make me some coffee.”

“You can’t tell Tony you didn’t drink the juice.” Peter calls, clattering around the kitchen.

“Why? What’s he going to do, divorce me?”

“Now, now,” Peter pretends to scold him, “be nice to your boy.”

Gordon doesn’t find that one as amusing, and makes for the bathroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The mirrored cabinet on the wall, when he opens it, is now full of Tony’s things, meticulously arranged by importance or size and whatfuckingever criteria Tony arranges his cosmetics by. Gordon suddenly realises that the only reason he even knows it’s been ordered at all is because he knows it would be – the cabinet is full to bursting, various hair products and skincare _things_ jostling for space. The only stuff he’d ever kept in it before had been toothpaste, medication, and a single razor. Still. It looks a bit less forlorn this way, even if it does resemble the window of Tony’s favourite hairdressing salon.

The smell of coffee reaches him, and he follows it back into the kitchen. Peter is sipping a mug of something that looks insufficiently caffeinated, probably _green tea_ , but the mug he proffers in Gordon’s direction is hot and brown and undeniably very good coffee, strong enough that Gordon finally feels capable of actually dealing with Peter’s presence in his flat. They stand in silence, watching each other warily.

“Gordon,” says Peter says, slowly, finally, “Gordon, do you think this will... work?”

Of the vast number of reasons that Gordon Peter, one of the ones he hates the most is the way that everything he says sounds like a euphemism.

“Why shouldn’t it?”

“Because,” Peter begins, before considering, fingers drumming against his mug, “the two of you – you and Tony – can be, when in concert…”  He halts again, searching for a word that won’t start any fights. “Volatile.”

“Couples fight.”

“They do,” Peter agrees, quickly, but the fan of concerned lines around his eyes remain in place. “But if you fight in front of this lady…” Gordon glares mutely, forcing Peter to conclude the sentence. Peter sighs. “I’m worried about what might happen if, say, you try to kill each other.”

“Have you been talking the Alastair? That’s his fucking paranoid dreams, not yours. We don’t try to kill each other. We just–”

“Nonetheless,” Peter interrupts, firmly. “If you decide to be... Tony-and-Gordon… this could become a problem very quickly.”

“I _know_.”

“Do you?” He asks. “Have you taken precautions?”

“Obviously,” Gordon lies, wondering what the fuck ‘precautions’ are supposed to be. “Did he put you up to this?”

“No, Gordon.” Peter sounds exasperated now. “Tony is, sadly, even more committed to this absurd, fraudulent, and potentially dangerous bit of playacting than you are.” He’s doing a _look_ , the one that suggests a layer of meaning under his words that Gordon is failing to dig out, but Gordon can’t deny that he’s right; Tony has taken to the charade with the usual delight with which Tony always takes to profoundly complex and morally dubious situations.

That Gordon is angry enough to try and blame Tony for Peter’s reticence – reticence Gordon would have been the one to voice, had Peter been the one doing this – is probably not a good omen for the whole enterprise. Somehow, though, he can’t quite believe this will go wrong. He calms himself and searches for a justification.

“We used to be… close.”

“You still are.”

“Well, yes, but it used be more like–” He sighs. He hates trying to describe this to others. Only Tony ever really understands. “It used to be overwhelming. Not for me, or Tony, we never noticed. But other people found it strange. Too much. They used to say it in one word– you remember. GordonandTony.”

“Right.”

“It could work,” he mutters. Out loud, it sounds pathetic, naive and hopeful and desperate. “There’s no reason why it couldn’t be like that.”

“Maybe,” says Peter, but it’s a whisper, and it feels too small.

He wants to ask Peter so many things. _Do you think we could be like that? Do you think we should? Why do you sound so sad? Do you still think about me? Do you ever hate it when they call you the Prince of Darkness? What about when they call you Mandy? Why did you choose Tony and not me?_ But he is afraid, and hesitates, and just as Peter seems about to say something, the front door clatters open and Tony enters the kitchen.

“Hey, it’s the love of my life! Ah, and my husband, too.”  

He pats Peter awkwardly on the back, like an apology, and winks at Gordon.

“Tony! Hi.” Peter is practically making eyes at him, the masochist.

“Stop making that joke,” snaps Gordon, mood souring.

“But it’s _really_ funny,” Tony pouts, cracking his knuckles and pouring himself a glass of water. His face is still flushed with the exertion. Peter’s is flushed with what Gordon assumes is something else entirely.

“It’s weird.”

It is weird. Not something someone should say, in a relationship. Not something they should say about each other. Not something Tony should say about Peter, when Peter is so painfully infatuated even _Gordon_ can see it.

“How was your jog?” Peter asks, and Tony beams. The dark circles are darker than ever, but he seems fine.

“Really great. I had that shake before I left and now I feel _brilliant_. Sleep is an illusion. Did he have his?”

“Of course,” Peter lies, smoothly, which eases Gordon's resentment at being referred to like someone absent, or a family pet. “I insisted.”

Tony’s grin becomes, impossibly, wider, and he moves to pat Gordon’s arm.

“Well done, Gordon. We might yet be able to prevent you dying of a heart attack at forty-two.” He hums his way through his second glass of water. The shorts, Gordon notices suddenly, are bigger than the ones he usually wears when he’s exercising at home. The shirt is actually his own, as well, which is even better.

“So,” says Tony, setting the glass down, “I was thinking – about our meeting with the mark.”

“Don’t call her that.”  

“Well, I was thinking about how to make it convincing,” Tony continues brightly, pretending to ignore him. “That’s why I called Peter here.”

“Makes sense,” Gordon mumbles, watching the two of them through narrowed eyes. “Better to hire a professional conman than an amatuer.”

“ _Gordon_ ,” Peter pipes up in his most honeyed tones, a hand pressed theatrically to his heart. “Flattery will get you nowhere, dear.”

Gordon glares at the cracked kitchen tile at his feet, and wonders how he knows that Tony is smiling.

“Right, so, do we need a story, then?” When Gordon looks up, the man is practically rubbing his hand together with excitement. “About how we met?”

“We met at the firm. We worked together.”

“Right. Yes, good, I like it. Keeping it closer to the truth makes it more convincing, easier to remember,” Tony nods, approvingly.

He’s sounds like a bloody professional. Gordon supposes he is, really, being a lawyer, and suddenly feels acutely aware of being at a disadvantage. He grunts, allowing Tony to interpret it as agreement.

“How did you know you liked me, then?” Tony asks, one eyebrow raised, and Gordon immediately founders.

“I– I don’t know. There weren’t any other homosexual men around?”

Peter snorts.

“Oh, very convincing, Gordon. We homosexuals really talk exactly like that.”

“Fuck off,” Gordon snaps back, defensively. “It’s not the RSC, it’s just a little old lady.” This is _awful_.

Tony raises a hand, smiling.

“I know how I knew!” he says, in the tone of a child smugly anticipating a gold star on their latest work. They both look at him. “It was when we went to St. Andrews together, because you said you wanted to see it, but the town was dead because the University was out, and it rained the whole fucking time, and it was just us in an wet, cold, empty town doing absolutely nothing. And it was still amazing. That’s how I knew.”

“Oh,” he says.

He doesn’t know quite how to react to that. He remembers the trip. It should have been dull. He’d been to better places, with people he liked more, and found them dull. But with Tony it had just been good, funny and comfortable, and they’d hardly left their room except to continue the same conversations in overpriced pubs, but it had been… excellent. He’s not sure whether to be touched that Tony remembers it with similar fondness, or hurt that he considers it trivial enough to be warped into a romance for the purposes of this ludicrous charade.

“Oh, very good,” Peter says, pretending to clap. He glances back at Gordon. “That’s the kind of thing you want, Gordon.”

“You know what, Peter,” Gordon growls, “why don’t _you_ just pretend to be me, and I’ll stay in your fucking apartment.”

God, those two wankers together. This is unbearable.

“I’d be good at it, too,” Peter says, before puffing out his chest, squaring his shoulders, and growling in mock-deep mock-Scottish. “ _I’m Gordon Brown, I think happiness is a sin and divergence of opinion a fault._ ”

“Oh, that _is_ pretty good,” Tony says. Peter smiles knowingly.

“I can do you, too,” he offers. “ _I’m a wanker with the worst job on Earth_.”

“Yeah, we know he is, but can you do me now?” Tony replies, the timing perfect, and they both giggle.

“Fuck you,”  Gordon mutters, temper finally snapping, and they laugh harder as he stalks from the room in a sulk.

Peter stays until mid-afternoon, the two of them talking in low voices and high giggles that make Gordon want to punch something. He half-expects the landlady to show up, but she doesn’t, and come evening Tony takes his sleeping pills in order to be up for work, so there’s none of yesterday’s confidences. It’s just as well, Gordon thinks, struggling to sleep himself; Peter’s reappearance has reminded him of the world outside, the history between them, that they’re not GordonandTony anymore, and of the painful futility of pretending that they could be.

 

* * *

 

“Ed’s twitching,” Sue tells him.

“Sorry, Sue,” says Other Ed immediately, full of contrition.

Gordon ignores them. He’s got a paper to finish; he’s behind his own schedule, albeit ahead of everyone else’s. He doesn’t trust that Robin won’t find a way to unearth him from the faculty, and even aside from Robin, he increasingly feels that almost nobody is trustworthy.

“Gordon, he’s twitching _again_ ,” Sue grinds out. She sighs. “I know you don’t mean to,” she says, to a miserable-looking Other Ed, “but for God’s sake, keep your Tim Burton legs under control. It hurts, and I can’t work. And if I can’t work, Planet Fuck over there _will_ develop an aneurysm, and possibly throw the stapler again.”

Gordon smiles behind the laptop. As self-conscious as he is about his fits of rage, Sue has a way of making them sound comic. Excusable. A quirk anyone might have.

“Sorry, Sue,” Other Ed repeats.

Gordon shuffles his desk a little way from them. It’s not the largest office he’s ever had, but it’s a room, rather than a cubicle, with space for several people to work, and to give supervisions to the students. He does feel sorry for Sue, though. Other Ed’s gangly legs make him a nightmare to sit close to when he’s twitching.

“Is that clock working?” Other Ed asks, nodding to where it hangs over the fireplace.

“Yeah,” says Sue, not looking up. “Why, do you have somewhere to be?”

“Er.”

Sue frowns.

“Is it important? Usually I have physically push you limpets away from Gordon.” Other Ed looks increasingly uncomfortable.

“Does Ed, um, does he still arrive at noon?”

“ _Oh_ ,” she says, too loudly. Gordon pushes a hand back through his hair and tries to return to the paper. “Your little war of attrition still going, then?”

The sudden silence of Other Ed’s refusal to answer is suddenly pointed, and Gordon can feel Sue’s look burning the back of his neck even as he squints at the screen. When he finally caves and glares back at her, she points over at Other Ed.

 _Talk to him_ , she mouths. Ridiculous. What would he talk to Other Ed about? He’s no desire to scare him off; poaching the boy from Harriet had been the best move he’d made in ages. Polite, deferential, he shouldered the workload with perfect ease and seldom interrupted Gordon with questions. There’s nothing wrong with Other Ed. Well, nothing that Gordon can solve, anyway.

He works on until interrupted by a crash; Other Ed’s knee has hit the table, knocking the glass of water that had stood there onto a pile papers he was currently trying to salvage. Sue snaps.

“Ok, that’s _it_ ,” she announces to the room at large. “Gordon. Talk to him about it.”

“About what?” they both ask at the same time.

“Ed, you’re scared of Ed. It’s a problem. More importantly, it’s getting in the way of your _work_.”

“Fine,” Gordon grunts. He looks at Other Ed for a moment. “Stop being scared of Ed.”

“Ok,” Other Ed nods.

Problem solved.

“No,” Sue orders, more stridently still. “Talk to him like a _person_.”

What does that mean? Gordon feels this is an entirely unreasonably request. Sue folds her arms.

“Fine,” he relents, immediately.

He leaves his desk, moving to loom over Other Ed. It occurs to him he can’t remember what the problem is. Something about a girl? He’s not sure. Ed and Other Ed work _incredibly_ well together. He can’t understand why they’d let something so petty and personal get in the way. That paper on child poverty had been so good he’d mentioned it in his latest book.

“ _Gordon._ ” Sue says, interrupting his panic. “Ed. What’s the issue here? Is because he’s dating Harriet’s girl?” She frowns. “You don’t like her, do you?”

“Oh no, no, not at all,” Other Ed says, fast.

“Shit,” says Sue, as the next thought occurs to her. “Ed, please tell me you don’t like _him_.”

Other Ed laughs, looking more embarrassed than usual. “No, it’s just… she’s my roommate. We’ve lived together for ages, but we worked well together straight away. She’s nice. Professional. We really clicked. I don’t, you know – I’m not jealous,” he clarifies, flushing, “but I don’t want to share with anyone else. She’s my best friend. And I miss her, a bit.”

Sue’s expression has softened.

“Because of spending so much time at Ed’s?”

Gordon’s phone is vibrating, but Sue and Ed are still talking. He doesn’t think they’ll notice him. It might be important.

It’s not important. It’s from Tony.

“I just… get her. We get each other. And now it feels like my work life and my Yvette-life are mixed. Like I’ll have to choose a side. Like _she’ll_ choose a side, and ditch me. I don’t want another roommate,” he says sadly, the entire nasally rant grating on Gordon’s nerves. “The London housing market means you have to share with awful people, but even if they were good, it wouldn’t be as good as living with your best friend, you know?”

 _Yooooo bae!_ Tony’s text reads. Gordon wonders what ‘bae’ means. It can’t possibly be good. _Coming over rn with something you will LOVE_

 _Don’t ever call me that again,_ Gordon texts back, fast. Fury is the best cover for confusion, when dealing with Tony.

“Well, you can’t just keep avoiding Ed forever,” Sue is saying. God bless Sue and her willingness to deal with morons for him. He wonders if he could set her on Tony.

His phone buzzes again.

 _G, seriously, im coming over. Had a brilliant idea. (man running) (car) (blast of air) (heart emoji)_  

_NO._

“Yes, I can,” Other Ed says, face set. “It’ll only be for a year or so now.”

“And if she marries him?”

“Oh… yikes.” It is clear from Other Ed’s crestfallen expression that this has not occurred to him.

“What if she marries someone else?” Sue continues, pressing her advantage. “What if _you_ want to marry someone else? You have to face the outside world at some point, Ed. You won’t live with your lovely roommate forever. You need to deal with, you know… life.”

Other Ed falls silent as Gordon watches the message bubble that tells him Tony is typing. What is he _doing_? Tony hates coming to the university. It’s full of snobs and hippies, according to Tony, and worse, it has Charlie and Damian in it. Is he about to renege on their deal? Or do something even worse?

“Gordon, tell him,” Sue orders.

_I’m coming over._

_Don’t._

_Already here. The receptionist was very helpful. And pretty._

_Leave,_ Gordon texts back, suddenly furious. Tony sends back an emoji of a face that blows a heart at him.

“ _Gordon_ ,” Sue says, menacing.

“Er, hm,” he says, head spinning slightly. “Yes. Ed, Sue’s right.”

Are they still on about the girl? What does Sue want him to do? _Why_ is Tony coming over? Was he here already? How will he explain it to Sue?

He blinks at Other Ed.

“Don’t feel entitled to Yvonne,” he grunts, eventually.

“Yvette.”

“Yeah,” Gordon says, glancing from the window down into the courtyard. No Tony. “Sue’s right.”

“You weren’t listening.”

“No, but she’s always right.” Other Ed laughs slightly.

“Yeah, maybe.” He still sounds sad. “Thanks, Sue. I do need to be off, though. David wants to get lunch.”

Gordon waves an awkward goodbye, then tries not to punch anything a minute later when he spots Tony ambling across the lawns below in the opposite direction to Other Ed.

 _Don’t come in_ , he texts.

_You’ll want me to._

_I don’t._

_Gordon, I have something great to show you, and I don’t care if you don’t want to see it._

Sue joins Gordon at the window as Tony arrives at the entrance to the building. Gordon wonders whether she’d cover for him, if he dropped a printer from the window. Accidentally, of course.

“Oh. Wow. Is that _Tony_?” Sue asks, over his shoulder.

Gordon is too angry to formulate words, so his response consists of a small growl as he hammers out a text.

_DO NOT COME YOU IDIOT DO NOT DO NOT._

“He just turned his phone off,” Sue comments, still watching Tony. “Oh, and now he’s coming in.”

Gordon considers locking the door. Maybe he could throw a printer at him again. Tony had dodged, last time, but printers are smaller these days, and Gordon might be able to surprise him.

There’s a knock on the door.  Sue opens it.

“Sue!” Tony exclaims, as though there was nobody he’d rather have seen. He kisses her cheek. “It’s been _ages_.” Yes, thinks Gordon, because you hate each other. “Have you heard that Gordon and I are bound by God’s Divine Will and a legal contract on the lease of a rather lovely apartment?”

Sue doesn’t even blink.

“Oh, you finally told him, did you?” she asks Gordon, deeply amused. “I must remind Peter of our bet, he put money on it happening in your twenties, but I _thought_ you’d take longer.”

“Really?” asks Tony, looking thrilled. “How much?”

“Get _out_ ,” Gordon manages, through a clenched jaw.

“No,” says Tony, absolutely sweetly. He settles himself into Gordon’s chair and sticks his feet on the desk that Gordon _knows_ Tony knows is Charlie’s. “I,” he continues, practically shining, “have had a _brilliant_ idea. Ask me what my brilliant idea was.”

“I’m going to throw you bodily through the window,” Gordon tells him. “If you don’t leave.”

Tony smiles as serenely as though Gordon had asked eagerly for the details of his brilliant idea, and reaches inside his suit to produce a small velvet box. It is unmistakably a jewelry box. In fact–

“Check this out,” Tony sings, opening the little box with a flourish.

On the pillow lie two rings. Gordon bites his tongue so hard it bleeds. Tony smiles at his expression, and picks one up.

“Twenty-four karats, the diamonds are very discreet, I told them you wouldn’t want anything flashy. But the inscription inside is–”

“ _We achieve more together than we achieve alone,”_ Sue reads, inspecting the other ring. She looks faintly impressed.  

“Which is just brilliant, isn’t it?”

Sue grins.

“Surprised you didn’t go for _we live together freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect,_ ” she offers, and Tony giggles. “How did you pay for something like this, though?”

Tony beams at her.

“Well, the wages of sin is death,” he proclaims solemnly, straightening his tie. His eyes haven’t left Gordon’s stricken face. “But the wages of sin are _also_ enough money to buy really nice rings.”

Sue hands him the ring. It is nice. It’s probably the nicest he’s ever seen. The inscription is… more touching than he will ever, ever admit. Tony is good at this. People. Him.

“Cool, isn’t it?” Tony is obviously proud of himself. “We can wear it for the month. For verisimilitude.”

“How do you even know my ring size?” Gordon grumbles. “ _I_ don’t know my ring size.”

Tony shrugs.

“I guessed. And they’re good. They did Princess Diana’s wedding ring.”

To keep himself from having to look at Tony, Gordon continues inspecting the ring. _For verisimilitude_ , Tony had said, as though people regularly bought rings for thousands of pounds just to add a touch of realism. It’s overdoing it, Gordon thinks. He shouldn’t have asked Tony to live with him. He should have told Tony to stop. Even now, though, he’s aware that he would never have been able to tell Tony to stop. He can’t say no to Tony; he can only scream, sulk, or throw printers.

Still, he needs to try.

“Tony, what are you going to do with these when she leaves? How much did they cost? This is–” _wrong_ , Gordon thinks.

“I don’t know. Sell it. Give it to a girlfriend. Sell it to a girlfriend,” Tony shrugs. “Gordon, this is the coolest and most outrageous thing I’ve ever done, apart from joining the Labour party, and that coat I made from curtains–”

“That was a bad coat. I’ve seen the pictures.”

“–and you’re not allowed to ruin it for me.”

“It is nice of him, Gordon,” Sue agrees. “That inscription.”

The inscription is half the trouble. It’s not an impersonal bit of jewellery to be thrown away at the end of the month. It’s _his_.

“Did you really get Princess Diana’s people?” Sue asks.

“I got the people who did it for _a_ Princess Diana. Might’ve been ours, might’ve been a minor royal from country we never heard of. The important thing is that, in our hearts and our memories, she is forever the people’s princess.”

The problem, Gordon thinks, is that he doesn’t _want_ to say no. His mind is made up, albeit having reached a conclusion he’s fairly certain is a bad one. Sometimes he wants things he shouldn’t, irrationally. Impressive, shiny things, things that could hurt him, things that are bad. Tony’s things, usually. He has already said yes. To pretend otherwise would be another lie on top of far too many.

“Yes,” he says, slowly. “Not about Diana,” he adds, at Tony’s startled look, “She was annoying. The rings.”

He goes to slide the one he’s holding onto his ring finger, but the pause as he tries to remember which one it is gives Tony time to scramble to his feet and take the ring from him.

“Absolutely not,” Tony declares. He’s not smiling, except around the eyes, and Gordon suddenly understands what Tony is doing. Neither love nor money can stop Tony when he needs to prove a point. “You can’t put it on your own finger. It would spoil the magic. It’s my job.”

“Fuck off. No.”

“Oh, come on, Gordon,” Sue intercedes. “I know he’s a prick, but he just bought you a very nice present.”

“Whose side are you on?” Gordon demands, stung.

“My own.”

Gordon wishes, suddenly, that he’d never wanted the fucking ring, perfect as it is. He wishes he could pretend this is all some stupid joke of Tony’s. It probably is. It almost definitely is. But he’d had it inscribed with _that_ , and it’s beautiful, and Tony is giving it to him.

“Fine. Yes. Fine,” he agrees bluntly. “You’re not allowed to kiss my hand.”

Tony grins at Sue, as though sharing a great secret.

“He’s terribly repressed about that sort of thing.”

Sue, being a traitor, snorts in amusement. Tony takes Gordon’s hand, still smiling, and sinks to one knee in front of him with a little sigh. The sadistic bastard is enjoying eking out the torture for as long as possible, because Gordon needed a favour and needed him and now Gordon is as tied to Tony as if they’d really been married. If Tony decides that means expensive presents, that’s what it means, and Gordon has to accept them, whether he secretly likes them or not. Tony’s thumb brushes Gordon’s palm as he pushes the ring down over his finger, and Gordon suddenly prickles with discomfort at the intimacy of the situation.

“You can let go of my hand now.”

“Don’t ruin the moment,” Tony says, clearly enjoying his joke immensely.

For an unbearable moment, Tony keeps holding onto him, smiling absently. At least he seems to consider the money he’d spent worth it, Gordon thinks, staring down at the thinning gold-brown of Tony’s hair.

The door crashes open with a force that makes the bookshelves shake, and Gordon is suddenly acutely aware of Tony, on his knees in front of him; his hand in Tony’s; the ring.

Ed Balls stands in the doorway.

Ed and Tony had met several times. Every single one had been a disaster. Tony is convinced that Ed is the reason Charlie and Damien work so hard to fracture his friendship with Gordon. Ed, he said, was the reason Gordon was mad with him all the time. That Gordon might be mad with him because Tony was an _unbearable condescending stubborn fuck_  clearly didn’t occur to him, but then, it wouldn’t.

“What th- the _fuck_ is going on here?” Ed asks, pale with horror. His voice is actually trembling.

“Nothing,” Gordon announces, removing his hand from Tony’s and shoving it hastily into his pocket.

“Great news!” Tony says brightly, rising to his feet and clapping Ed briefly on the shoulder. “Hope you don’t mind calling him Professor Blair from now on.”

He laughs at Ed’s horrified face, giving him finger guns and a wink as sweeps out of the office, still giggling. Gordon decides to leave the ring in his pocket until he leaves work that evening.

Besides, if it came to it, he’s fairly sure Tony would take _his_ surname.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t come on Monday, or Tuesday; nobody, in fact, comes at all – not even Peter – until somebody knocks at the door on Friday night. Tony glances up at the door, then looks at Gordon, who has frozen, staring at the door.

“I’ll get it,” Gordon barks, trying to summon a smile. _St. Andrews_ , he thinks, and _we met at the firm_ and _Tony insisted on a spring wedding_. He’s aware that he’s tensing; he’s not sure they’re ready for this. True, they haven’t fought, but not fighting is a world from a fabricated marriage. He’s not sure anybody would believe they’re a couple. Maybe this was a bad idea.

It’s not the landlady, though, but a much younger woman, with bottle-blonde hair and a large smile. Gordon recognises her, vaguely, but he can’t put his finger on it.

“Heya!” she says. Not British. Sounds American. New York, in the way most wealthy Americans sound like they’re from New York. “We’re the new neighbours downstairs. Just moved in. Well,” she amends, conspiratorially, “just finished unpacking, anyway. We’re doing a housewarming and we wondered if you’d like to join us?”

“Thank-you, no,” says Gordon.

“ _Absolutely_ , yes,” says Tony, appearing at Gordon’s shoulder. Their new neighbour smiles patiently. “Tony,” says Tony, sticking out a hand. “Gordon’s husband.”

“Hillary,” she says, shaking it in bemusement. “So –?”

“Oh, yes. I’m so sorry, will you just give us a moment?” Tony is still wearing his most doe-eyed expression as he turns back to Gordon. “Can I talk to you the kitchen?”

He wants to say no. It would be rude to leave Hillary on their doorstep. It would be rude to refuse, though, too, so he follows Tony to the kitchen.

“We should say yes,” Tony declares.

“No. Absolutely not. Absolutely no.” Gordon folds his arms in front of his chest. “It’s useless and stupid and we’d have to lie to them.”

“No, but hear me out.” Gordon doesn’t want to, but Tony is sporting his most serious and sincere expression as he steamrollers on inexorably. “If we do this, we will become a _thing_. Like, you know, Tony-and-Gordon-from-upstairs. It’s more convincing.”

“Convincing,” Gordon repeats, as though the word is a bitter one.

“Listen. Just follow my lead,” Tony offers, soothingly. “We needn’t be demonstrative. Just go down there and drink their wine. Then they’ll know who I am, and we’ll look established enough that if the mark ever drops by again you can pretend I’m on a business trip and nobody will think anything of it.”

“Don’t call her that,” Gordon replies, but there’s no heat in it. Then he considers for a moment. Tony’s case is persuasive. “Fine. One hour. Then I’m going to bed.”

They come out of the kitchen.

“Persuaded him!” Tony tells Hillary brightly, pushing a stack of Gordon’s papers aside and fishing out a bottle of red Gordon _knows_ a) isn’t Gordon’s and b) has been in his flat long before Tony moved in. “Sorry about that.”

She looks uncertain.

“If your husband’s tired…”

“Oh no,” Tony’s smile could swallow suns. Gordon _loathes_ it, the big shiny public one he gives to clients and strangers. “No, Gordon just overworks himself, and I convinced him to take a break.”

She laughs.

“Mine has to do the same with me,” she says, as Gordon locks their door. “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” she adds, clearly delighted, when Tony proffers the wine. “This is one of my favourites,” she adds over her shoulder, trotting ahead of them down the stairs to her flat.

“Tony.” Gordon seethes through gritted teeth. Tony merely smiles inquisitively in response. “Tony, is there a _reason_ you’ve been keeping a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape in my flat for six months?”

Tony’s grin only gets broader, but they’re ushered into Hillary’s apartments before he can respond, and then overwhelmed by a deluge of introductions to people he barely knows; people from all over the building, several strangers, Hillary’s white-haired husband.

The conversation is the usual middle-class-drinks-party chatter: dogs, cats, children and gardening and restaurants and they talk about dogs and cats and children and gardening and drinks and – something about a television show about cake. He’s unsure about the last one, mentally drifting from the conversation. Nobody notices, because nobody is really talking to him; they’re talking to a member of a unit, to TonyandGordon. He feels like a sideshow, until he realises that Tony hasn’t stopped looking at him through the entire conversation, and he recovers enough to play the piano for them. Then it transpires that Hillary’s husband plays the saxophone, and as Gordon can’t do any jazz, he has an excuse not to duet. They listen to the sax; swap stories about university; drink enough to relax. Tony charms everyone in the room, and Gordon enjoys watching him do it, and Tony enjoys being watched, and he remembers why people mistook them for spouses in the first place. It isn’t really an act, he thinks, mellow with wine and exhaustion. It’s not fraud. They really are like this, on good days. Like a married couple. Not crawling all over each other. Just preferring each other’s company to anyone else’s.

“...so Hills did criminal, but she teaches now,” the husband is saying. “And what about you, Tony, what’re you doing?”

“Oh, corporate,” Tony says, breezily. “Consulting, you know – all kinds of stuff. Not always pretty.”

Hillary suddenly looks uneasy.

“Wait, were you the Anthony Blair who –”

“Probably,” Tony interrupts. His ever-present smile has gone rather taut. Gordon wonders what it is she’s thinking of as the atmosphere becomes slightly tense.

“So how did you and Gordon meet?” someone else asks, diffusing the situation, and Tony laughs charmingly.

“Worked in the same office,” Gordon says, before Tony can launch into some hideously complex story.

“Ah, not uni, then. How long did it take you to get him to say yes, Tony?”

Laughter.

“Oh, he made the first move, actually.” Tony’s smile is impish. Several eyebrows raise at that; Gordon’s aware they’re looking at him.

“Lack of options,” he offers, managing a genuine smile when Tony pouts, offended. The others laugh along; Gordon supposes the response must have simply sounded like light-hearted marital teasing.

“Oh, go on,” Hillary’s husband says, lightly, with a wink at Tony. “He’s got more going for him than that, surely?”

Tony, Gordon knows, is ready to rescue him with a quip if Gordon needs it. He doesn’t need it, though; he has an answer for this, because it’s true.

“I don’t smile a lot,” he admits, slowly. “Tony makes me smile.” Their hosts appear satisfied, and Tony takes the opening.

“Well, that’s very sweet, but for me it was definitely the biceps,” he jokes, provoking more giggles, and the conversation is steered from Gordon’s interrogation. Further how-we-met and when-I-knew stories are offered, which Gordon finds sentimental and dull, but which could be worse, and he drinks when drinks are offered, and the hour turns to two, then three, then four, and then to helping the neighbours clean the plates from the living room because, well, Tony insisted.

“How long have you been married?” Hillary’s husband asks, standing over the sink in marigolds and handing him another plate to dry.

“Three years,” Gordon says. That seems about right. He’s a bit drunk now, sleepy and slow, and he’s not quite sure whether they agreed how long. It’s been a while, though, he knows that. They’re that sort of couple.

“Almost ten, for us,” the other man says with a huff of laughter. “It’s weird,” he adds quietly, almost to himself, “how much you can end up liking someone’s company.”

“I guess.” Gordon mutters, unable to find a better response. Americans are so intense.

“Like, we haven’t always – it hasn’t always been –  but still, there’s stuff. Like – her laugh. People say it’s annoying. She hates it.” He shrugs. “I kind of love it. You think it’s about the big things, you know, sex and careers and kids. But it’s not. It’s just stuff like that.”

Gordon knows he shouldn’t really reply, that that speech wasn’t really for him, that the wine has gone to their heads, making them soppy. He knows that. But still.

“Tony's really self-conscious about his hair," he offers, "because it’s receding now. But I like it. It’s –” he tries to find the right word. “Endearing, I guess.”

“Yeah, like that.”

They continue washing and drying in silence. Gordon feels a little uncomfortable under the weight of too much emotion betrayed, but nobody who cares has seen, so he keeps drying and stacking plates clumsily until he notices Tony leaning against the door-jamb with a tiny smile.

“Come on. I’m taking you home.”

They make their goodbyes and walk back upstairs in silence; after Gordon unlocks the door, Tony wanders off for a shower and Gordon lays a duvet out over the couch before collapsing on top of it.

“That was ok,” Gordon admits, when he hears Tony come back into the living room. “Had a nice time.”

“Are you drunk?” Gordon can sense the smile; sure enough, when he prises his eyelids open, Tony is standing before him, amused and smelling of expensive soap.

“A little,” Gordon admits. He’s slurring slightly, he realises. “They kept refilling my glass.”

“I told them to.” Tony kneels down to untie one of Gordon’s shoelaces, then another. Gordon considers protesting as he watches him slide the shoes off and set them aside.

“Good man,” he says, instead. “I needed a drink.”

Tony laughs and leans back against the sofa, looking up at Gordon. There’s a fixity in his gaze that ought to be ringing alarm bells, Gordon thinks, but he’s tired and warm and Tony smells nice, and –

“Hey,” says Tony, softly. “Did you mean that stuff? About my hair?” He sounds almost casual, good enough to fool anyone else, but Gordon isn't anyone, and if he were sober, he thinks smugly, he’d be able to place exactly the nature of the tension lying under the words.

“What, that it’s thinning? You know it is, Tony. You can’t fight it forever."

“Fuck off,” Tony replies, red-faced and off-guard. He’s probably a little drunk too; he sounds defensive rather than amused, and Gordon smiles, sleepily.

“It’s not my fault,” he points out, entertained. “You did ask.”

“You wanker,” Tony says, even more flustered. “Y– oh, you know what, whatever.”

He’s so insecure about his looks sometimes. Endearing, Gordon thinks for the second time that evening, eyes heavy. It's endearing when he drops the perpetually charming act. It’s almost sweet.

“Don’t tear out your hair about it, Tony,” he teases. “You don’t have much to spare.”

Tony makes a little noise somewhere between a high-pitched laugh and a hiccup.

“ _You_ ,” he complains, scrambling to his feet, “are the thickest genius I’ve ever met.” There’s a slight whining note in his voice that Gordon is enjoying immensely. He pauses in the doorway on his way to the bedroom. “Analytical intelligence, yes. But emotional intelligence? _Zero_.”

“I have got lots of hair though,” Gordon replies through a yawn.

“ _Idiot_ ,” he hears Tony mutter as he retreats down the hall, and smiles into his pillow thinking of Tony’s nervous face, and shortly afterwards he's asleep.

 

* * *

 

Tony is dozing on his couch when he arrives home, which is strange, because Tony doesn’t sleep, and because it’s only four thirty; he’d come home early, hoping to escape the Eds’ ongoing drama and the glares Charlie was directing at the ring on Gordon’s finger. He’d meant to start marking essays, but now Tony is here, asleep in his living room, and he suddenly realises that if he doesn’t go and check that Tony’s ok now, he’ll only end up thinking about it all through the essays, and fail to scrutinise them properly. Then he wonders when, exactly, his life had become like this. _Again_.

He shakes Tony gently, warily; he sighs a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding when Tony’s eyes flutter open. The ever-present dark circles are still there, but he looks wrong, somehow. Had he been crying? No, that wasn’t it, exactly. He is, Gordon reflects ruefully, probably up to something.

“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” he says, reproachful.

“Yeah,” Tony agrees, obviously still sleepy. “Mm, they were throwing a party for some exec today, so everybody was drunk, nobody working, and I just really wanted to go home and sleep.”

“So you came here?”

“It’s closer.”

“Not really.”

“Well, I’m tired.”

“Are you up to something?” he asks, tired of trying to work it out. He has those essays to go over.

“What? No,” he says, too innocently, pressing his face back into the couch.

“You look like you’re up to something.”

“I’m not,” Tony mumbles, voice muffled by the cushion. Gordon hesitates.

“Ok,” he says, at last, glancing around the room involuntarily. He wonders what he’s searching for – hidden landmines that Tony might have planted while he was away? There’s nothing. “What do you want for dinner?”

“Something nice,” Tony mumbles, turning his head on the cushion to face Gordon again and frowning a moment, as if thinking. He clearly comes to a conclusion, raising himself on his elbows. “Actually, don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

“Is this an attempt to get me to try dieting? Because–”

“It’s an attempt to have something nice for dinner.”

“Just that?” Gordon asks, unconvinced.

“ _Yes_ ,” Tony promises, eyes wide. “Listen, you stay here and get your work done,” he adds soothingly, locating his shoes, “I’ll sort it.”

He leaves and doesn’t return for nearly two hours – not that Gordon’s watching the clock; he’s got essays to mark and can’t be worrying about Tony – but when he returns, he seems to have ordered from every gourmet restaurant their side of the river; there’s so much food he’s surprised that Tony can carry it all. He looks like the world’s most overburdened Deliveroo worker. Gordon helps him unpack it all, trying not to laugh, and is pleasantly surprised to discover it’s not just salads. Tony, he reflects, really does have excellent taste when he’s not haring off on some crazed virtuous scheme. Then he realises Tony is already eating, and sits down to join him.

“Is this– did you make a bet with Peter or something? What’re you doing?” he asks, finally. Tony’s doing _something_. This behaviour is… uncharacteristic. Not only is the food much too good, Tony is eating it. In _silence_. “Have your bosses told you to–”

“Gordon,” Tony says, patiently,  “not everything I do is at the behest of Peter or my boss.” He unwraps the cake, carefully, and Gordon frowns. It’s chocolate cake. Chocolate cake is Gordon’s favourite; Tony, on the other hand, believes it causes cancer. “I have the day off. I have insomnia. I just want to have dinner and go back to sleep. Try the chocolate cake. It’s amazing.”

“Ok,” Gordon relents. He tries the chocolate cake; it’s delicious. Perfect. Probably cost Tony more than Gordon earns in a week.

But something is _wrong_ , and perhaps he’s paranoid, as Tony always tells him, but he can’t quite let go of it.

“You look…”

Tony raises an eyebrow, and Gordon feels heat rising to his cheeks.

“Not that! You look like you’re... up to something. And you’re eating something that isn’t made of kale.”

“I’m hungry,” Tony says, grinning around a mouthful of chocolate cake.

“No,” Gordon insists. “You look like you do when you’re hiding something.”

“You can’t tell that!” Tony protests, laughing. “I don’t have a lying face.”

“I can. You do. It’s your normal face.”

Tony rolls his eyes like a long-suffering spouse, and shrugs comically, and if Gordon didn’t know him so well, weren’t so painfully sensitive to the tiniest aberrations in his behaviour, he thinks he might almost have believed him.

 

* * *

 

It’s been two weeks, now, of this, and nobody has come. Gordon wonders if she’s forgotten about them. It seems stupid, in hindsight, to have made such a fuss; he considers mentioning it to Tony, then realises Tony will have already noticed, and is choosing not to mention it, doubtless for nefarious purposes of his own. It’s not fair to ask him to keep this up much longer, though. He considers sending Tony away, asking him to come back if she happens to drop by, make something up – it’d be nice to have the flat to himself again, with work the war-zone it is at the moment. It doesn’t really matter. It was always a temporary solution to a temporary problem, anyway.

In the bathroom, something falls to the floor with a heavy thump.

“Don’t break anything,” Gordon calls, only half-serious, but he strains his ears to catch Tony’s reply. From the bathroom, there’s only a gasp, and a cold bolt of fear sends Gordon hurtling gracelessly down the hall and through the bathroom door.

Tony is doubled over on the floor, eyes wide, shirt damp with sweat.

“Tony,” he demands, kneeling over him. Tony always listens to him; it doesn’t occur to him, in this moment, to doubt that he could override a seizure or a heart attack to do so now. “Tony, what’s going on?”

He can feel himself begin to panic as the list of possible medical causes unspools in his mind. Hypoglycemia – cardiac arrest – epileptic seizure – some advanced forms of meningitis – does Tony have asthma?– is this normal? Of course it’s not _normal_ , but does it happen often? Tony’s hands are cold and clammy, and he wonders if he can reasonably call for an ambulance before realising that Tony is saying something.

“Panic–” he mutters. “Panic. Attack.” His breathing is laboured, and his head drops with a soft _thump_ against Gordon’s knees.

“Are you sure?”

Tony nods, chest heaving. He looks terrified, Gordon thinks.

“Could you just…” he pauses, wincing in pain, a hand over his chest. “Could you maybe lend me something?”

“Of course,” Gordon mumbles, standing and pulling pills from the cabinet, and filling the glass on the sink with water. Tony drinks it, leaning gingerly against Gordon for support, and then ruffles a shaking hand through his hair, clearly conscious of the sweat. After a moment he slumps down onto the floor. They sit together in silence that way for some time, Gordon internally debating whether it would be proper to touch him. He doesn’t like to be touched himself, when agitated, but he’s never been lying on the bathroom floor with it before, and Tony is different, and he wishes Tony could recover himself enough to give instructions because he has _no idea_.

“Has this happened before?” he asks instead, when Tony’s breathing evens out. “You never used to have… this.”

Tony attempts a weak smile; it comes out as a grimace.

“It’s just stress,” he says, voice steady again. “The doctors say I should stop drinking coffee.” Gordon wonders what else the doctor says; it would be just like Tony, to latch onto the most trivial detail, offer it up to diffuse Gordon’s worry at a time like this. Tony breathes hard through his nose before going on. “Self-reinforcing, you know? Stress makes my chest hurt, panicking about my chest makes it hurt more, and it just…”

Ah. Gordon knows this one.

“Because of your dad?” he asks, quietly.

The list of things that Tony is really, genuinely afraid of is short, but it’s also a list of things Gordon never, ever talks about. He wonders, for a moment, if he’s crossed a line mentioning it even now, but Tony only closes his eyes briefly.

“I always think I’m going to– yeah.” He makes no moves to stand up. “He couldn’t walk, after,” he adds, in a whisper. “It wasn’t really a life. His whole life, it all just...”

Gordon thinks about botched eye operations and fluttering surgeons with panicked voices and long hours lying sightless in dark rooms, wondering whether he’d ever be able to see again, and he thinks he understands.

“You look terrible, Tony.”

“It’s fine.”

“You work too hard.”

“Physician…”

“Yours is different. You think it’s wrong. I know you do.”

Tony smiles up at him.

“You think yours is wrong, too, Gordon.” Gordon doesn’t quite dare stop him. “You know you chose academia for fun, not because you can do good in it. And you want to do good. I think you sort of have to. You’re, I don’t know, basically a public service guy at heart, I think.”

Some of the colour has come back into his cheeks, Gordon thinks, trying to ignore the way Tony’s uncomfortable _rightness_ settles, hard and cold, in his stomach.

“You’re not like them,” he insists. “The wankers at your firm. You’re better than them.”

“You’re sweet,” Tony murmurs, pulling himself upright. “Sorry about all that. I feel better now.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No. No, it’s ok.” Then he hesitates. “Actually–”

“What?”

“Er. Could you– can you sleep in your room? With me?” Gordon must look uncertain, because he adds in a rush, in a tone that means he's memorised it from an internet site, “If you suffer a vascular accident in the middle of the night without anybody present to help and call for an ambulance, the damage is much more likely to be permanent.”

“You’re not going to have a stroke, Tony.”

“No. No, I know.” He sounds a little lost, though. “Sorry. It was a ridiculous–”

“No, it’s fine.”

He’s not quite sure why it’s fine, but Tony asked, and Tony is his friend, and Tony wouldn’t even be here, sitting on Gordon’s bathroom floor with a hideously expensive ring on the second finger of his left hand, if Gordon hadn’t asked him for a favour. It’s unsettling, he thinks, watching someone you – well, someone who is what Tony is to him – so weak, and selfishly, he wants to stay close and make sure everything is ok.

He leaves Tony to shower, when he’s sure Tony can manage it, and collects his pillow and duvet from behind the couch, laying them out on the bedroom carpet. His back will hurt tomorrow, but it’s only for a night, he reasons; when Tony returns, however, he frowns at it.

“Don’t sleep on the _floor,_ Gordon,” he mumbles, sounding exhausted, and Gordon tenses.

“No, it’s fine, I–”

Tony giggles suddenly.

“Are you worried I’ll deflower you or something?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, go on, I promise not to steal your virtue.” Gordon is blushing furiously by now, and when Tony pats the bed next to him he realises there is only one way to persuade Tony to let go of this joke. And it would be more comfortable.

“Fine.” He grabs his pillow and sits, gingerly, on the far end of the bed before getting in, careful to leave as much space as possible between them.

Tony flicks the lights out.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, in the darkness. “For helping.”

“It’s fine.”

“You were a very good husband.”

“Go to sleep, Tony.”

“Alright, honey.”

Gordon can hear him smothering more giggles in the duvet, but he can’t quite bring himself to mind. Tony is Tony again. Everything will be ok.

 

* * *

 

It’s a Sunday morning, and so both of them sleep late, undisturbed by alarms; Gordon is the first to regain consciousness, out of habit, but he’s been sleeping poorly on the couch, and is less bothered by his arm around Tony’s waist than in dozing back off again. He’s woken Tony, who shifts a little against his chest, but neither of them are truly awake, and after a moment they settle again, feet still slightly tangled.

“Hey,” Tony manages to slur through the haze of sleep. “C’you move your knee? It’s digging in.”

His knees... aren’t touching Tony. Gordon blinks for a moment, brain sluggish, until clarity jolts him unpleasantly awake, and he jumps out of bed in panic, storming into the bathroom. Behind him, Tony grumbles at the rude dislodging, sleepily demanding Gordon _come back_. When Gordon locks the door and fails to reply to his questions, busy trying not to punch anything in mortification, he can practically _hear_ Tony working it out on the other side.

This is bad. This is a _disaster_. It’s probably the worst thing ever to happen to him, and even the humiliation and _horror_ of it isn’t helping the... situation. He catches sight of himself, red-faced and panicked, in the mirror, and winces in disgust.

“Oh.” Tony says, on the other side of the door. The bastard sounds _relieved_ ; he’s laughing now. “ _Oh_ , Gordon, you really need get laid more often or something if some cuddling is all it takes.”

And he’s right, of course.

It had started with the pills; there’d be side effects, according to the doctor, and at the time he’d been more interested in securing a fellowship than in dating, and he just… didn’t want to. Perhaps he could’ve found someone since, but he can’t summon the energy for a relationship, or the courage to attempt a one-night stand. He’s not a one-night stand sort of person, anyway.

Except that now, after being touch-starved for so long, his body has decided that it wouldn’t mind if he _were_ a one-night stand sort of person. He stands under the shower as cold as he can bear it and tries to think about Keith Joseph and poll taxes and not, say, about Tony’s arse pressed up against him or what might happen if he invited Tony into the shower with him, or perhaps just demanded he get to his knees on the kitchen floor, or perhaps _he_ could kneel on the kitchen floor, and–

He turns the water down colder, which seems to help; by the time he starts to shiver he’s able to mentally list the landmark policies of the ‘74 Labour government without thinking about being the Anthony Crosland to Tony’s Roy Jenkins. When he gets out his fingers are blue, but it’s worth it. Maybe it didn’t happen. Perhaps it was a dream – it wouldn’t be the first strange dream about a man he’d had to ignore. Perhaps he’d even dreamt that Tony has been living in his flat for a fortnight now, pretending to be his husband.

The bedroom is empty when he goes to get his clothes, but the bed is neatly made and it smells of Tony’s cologne. Not a dream, then. He changes as slowly as he can, stomach heavy with dread. Maybe Tony’s left in disgust. Maybe they’re no longer friends, now. Which would mean no longer being friends with Peter, because Tony would tell Peter, and Peter would never defy Tony. But that’s fine. He doesn’t need them. He’ll cut his losses and move on. Probably.

“You took your time,” Tony says, as Gordon walks into the kitchen. He puts a hand on Gordon’s elbow to steady himself as he reaches over to the counter for his coffee, and Gordon flinches back, skin burning.

“Hey, come on, don’t be like that,” Tony says, looking bemused, as he hands Gordon his own coffee – black, five sugars, _why does Tony still remember how he takes his coffee_ , “come on.” He pats Gordon’s arm and trots off into the living room. “Sit down.”

He perches on the edge of the couch, looking up at Gordon with wide, imploring eyes. Gordon makes no move to join him, standing in the doorway and sipping his coffee suspiciously. Distance, he thinks absently. Distance is good. He can’t accidentally molest Tony from here.

“Gordon, it’s only me. Calm down. I’m not going to force you into anything.”

 _Why not_ , thinks Gordon, and _that’s not what I’m worried about_ and _like you could_ and he doesn’t know which thought is worst.

They can’t fight now. Fighting would mean _touching_ , somehow, it always does, and Gordon can’t handle physical contact right now.

“I know you won’t.”

“Sure. I was just saying. You don’t need to be so… Gordon. About this.”

What does that mean? Why does Tony look so unaffected? What’s _wrong_ with him? The only thing worse that this would be – Gordon can’t actually work out what would be worse than this. At least Tony’s not a woman. Or maybe it would have been better if he’d been a woman. Perhaps this was what Tony’s been up to; a plan to turn Gordon gay and finally win the upper hand, permanently, by making Gordon sexually attracted to him.

“Listen. We can go about this in two ways,” Tony continues. “Either we tiptoe awkwardly around it for the rest of our lives, ruining our friendship forever, or we talk about it and clear the air.”

Awkward tiptoeing it is, Gordon thinks.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Oh, be fair to yourself,” Tony grins. “That was _definitely_ something to talk about. I felt it.” He raises an eyebrow when Gordon grinds his teeth furiously. “Come on, Gordon, sit down. Can’t we talk about this like adults?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Look, we shared a bed, you got a bit of morning wood, does this _really_ need to be a huge issue?”

This is terrible. This is a nightmare. He’s dreaming. He’s died. This is torture. Perhaps he could jump out of a window. He– Tony stretches his legs, and Gordon’s brain misfires, thinking about legs and arse and he forces himself not to think any further because he really _doesn’t_ need another cold shower today.

“Look, it’s been a really long time for you,” Tony is saying. “And you’re _really_ repressed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gordon demands, suddenly furious.

“Just that you might want to deal with urges as and when they arrive, rather than bottling it up and… well.” Tony spreads his hands as though to encompass the entirety of their present situation.

“Shut up, Tony.”

“Well, why don’t you explain, then?”  he says with a shrug, in that horrible conflict-mediating way he’s picked up from the new job.

“You–” Gordon starts. Then he stops. There aren’t words in the world that can make this ok. “You moved toward me,” he says, sullenly. “You said you wouldn’t. It’s not my fault.”

“I didn’t say it was. Calm down.”

Tony is still in conflict-defusing mode, but he’s _also_ taking the piss and Gordon hates it, hates him, not least because there’s something so attractive about it, the quiet ease in his own skin and the confidence and the charm and just _everything_.

“These things happen, Gordon. It’s a natural bodily function.”

“I know, I just wouldn’t want you to think–”

“To think what?” Tony asks, leaning in, and Gordon hesitates. Tony is smiling, but not in the way he does when he thinks Gordon is being ridiculous; he’s smiling his _gotcha_ smile, the one that appears when they’re arguing and Tony provides a beautifully constructed rebuttal after a stumble in Gordon’s rhetoric. Like he’s about to sink his teeth into his neck. “That you’re attracted to me? _Are_ you attracted to me, Gordon?” he asks, a very slight eyebrow raised, head cocked at that angle, the one he knows makes him look rakish and rather sweet all at once.

 _Yes_.

“No.”

“It wouldn’t be a big deal if you were,” Tony says, easily. “Not to me, obviously, but even for you. You can be attracted to a man or two and still be like... mostly heterosexual.” Tony nods, admiring his own logic. “And I’d be flattered. A lot of people are attracted to me. It’s a long and honourable tradition, being attracted to me.”

Gordon wants him to shut up. Gordon wants to shut him up by kissing him stupid, and that ought to be a new thought, and it wasn’t, it _wasn’t_.

“Thanks. But I’m not attracted to you.”

But he was.

“Sure. I was just saying, you know, like – join the club.”

Gordon blinks.

“What?”

“Just – I’d get it. It’s fine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I was once nineteen and at Oxford, Gordon,” Tony says, eyes crinkling. As though Gordon is being slow. As though it’s obvious.

“You –” He’s fairly sure he’s panicking now. He’s definitely panicking. “You were... attracted to men?”

_Please say no just say no say no you idiot say no –_

“Yeah, not just attracted. We don’t all have the sensibilities of a Victorian maiden aunt.”

Gordon feels slightly dizzy. He wonders if he’s going to be sick.

“You never told me!” he manages to level at Tony, who looks bemused by the venom in his voice.

“Well, you never asked!” he protests. As though it doesn’t matter either way. Like a triviality anyone might forget to tell their best friend. By the way, Gordon, we’ve known each other a decade now but did you know I can’t whistle and I’ve had sexual encounters with other men? “Does it matter?”

 _Yes. Yes. Yes, it matters that you’re gay_ (bisexual, Peter’s voice corrects tiredly in his head) _,_ _it matters because you’re gay and I want you, and therefore I’m gay, as you suspected, because I’m a fraud and a disgrace and I’m going to Hell and this is why I can’t go into politics or find a wife or be a normal human being for five fucking minutes and_ –

“It doesn’t matter,” he barks, voice dry and raspy with horror. “I don’t care about your fucking sex life.”

Tony shrugs, unfazed.

“Nice. I guess we’ll just write this off as one of those things, then.”

“I don’t care either way what you do,” Gordon snaps, unable to keep the bile from it.

“Ok,” Tony nods.

Gordon grabs the car keys. The gay car keys of his gay husband, to whom he is now, apparently, sexually attracted. He’s definitely getting nauseous. He needs to get out of here.

“I’m going out. I need to talk to Charlie.”

“Careful not to get too close to him,” Tony jokes.

“Well, don’t have sex with any men while I’m out.”

Tony blinks, slightly confused.

“Right. I don’t really do that anymore, but if I feel the urge I’ll just ignore it.”

He tries not to bolt for the door, but once Tony’s out of sight he stumbles too quickly down the stairs and almost falls. He can’t stay in there, in the flat, with all the… the gay lying and the gay memories and the gay fantasies and gay Tony. He needs answers. He needs some air. He needs to get very, very drunk.

 

* * *

 

Peter’s neighbours have told him to stop hammering at the door twice now, but Gordon keeps at it, oblivious to their glaring and poisonous remarks, until Peter opens up, unusually dishevelled and squinting against the light.

“No, I don’t care what Tony’s done now, and yes, it’s all his fault, can I go back to bed now?” Peter says automatically, before catching Gordon’s panicked expression. He scans Gordon critically, and then his eyes widen at _something_ – Peter has a radar all of his own, Gordon knows, so perhaps he’s detecting something on a frequency Gordon can’t hear – and steps aside to let him through. “Come in.”

Gordon does, and makes for Peter’s couch, feeling slightly unsteady as Peter locks the door and comes to stand in front of him, gazing down with an expression of mixed concern and confusion. Gordon can’t talk to him. Gordon has to talk to him.

“Has Tony told you?” he blurts out, finally.

“What?”

“Have you talked to Tony? Did he say anything about me?”

“Sorry– do you mean _ever_ , or just in the past few days?”

“Did he tell you about–” he can’t explain this. Not to Peter. “About the incident?”

“The incident,” Peter repeats.

“I…” He stumbles on it several times. “I slept with Tony.”

Peter's expression doesn't change.

“No. Not, not like – we slept in the same bed.”

“Disappointing, but characteristically boring of you.”

“But I think–” he takes a deep breath. “I think maybe I wanted– want – to sleep with him. For real.” He covers his face with his hand, as he does when he’s thinking. He can’t bear to see Peter’s expression at this moment.

“I think I find Tony attractive.”

Peter says nothing; instead, he disappears into the kitchen and returns shortly, sitting down next to him in the couch.

“Is it normal? That I find Tony attractive? Is that a– Peter, is that gay?”

“I don’t know,” Peter replies evenly, handing him a glass of water. “Attractive, like an increase in top-level tax to pay for public services, or attractive in the sense of wanting to have lengthy sessions of really filthy sex with him? Admittedly,” he adds, thoughtfully, “for you the distinction is probably a difficult one to make.”

Gordon drinks some of the water. He has no idea of which sense he finds Tony attractive in. He has no idea. He’s not used to admitting these kinds of things to himself, let alone articulating them. Thoughts like these should be strangled before they can be acknowledged, not spoken aloud, not confessed to people he (mostly) hates. He lacks an adequate framework to consider this in.

“Are you ok?” Peter asks. His voice is rather soft.

“I decided,” he says slowly, because he needs to say something, “that I couldn’t– I couldn’t be gay, if I went and found a girl.” Peter’s face is studiedly non-judgemental. “So I did. And it was fine. And then we– well, she tried to. Touch me.”

“A fairly integral component of sex,” Peter agrees, and it takes Gordon a moment to realise that it’s an attempt to cheer him up a little; when he does, he smiles back, half-heartedly.

“And I... couldn’t. I couldn’t, so I left, and I, I found this,” he says, brandishing his phone, the website he’d found, under Peter’s nose. His hands are shaking slightly, he notices.

Peter lifts a single, eloquent eyebrow.

“Because if I was gay, then– but I didn’t, so I thought I wasn’t. I wasn’t gay.”

Peter, very gently, attempts to prise the phone from Gordon’s white-knuckled grip. Gordon clings on.

“But I looked at another one. To be certain,” he explains, clicking through onto the next video, and Peter presses his lips together. He might even be suppressing a slight smile. “And he – not the one doing the–”

“Yes.”

“The other one, I thought he looked a bit like T–”

“I see it, yes.”

“The hair, you know, and the blue eyes, and the really nice–”

“Yes, I follow your point,” Peter assures him, smartly closing the video and taking the phone from him.

“And I started thinking about Tony again, and I can’t stop staring at this guy, because he _does_ look a bit like Tony, but without all the crap Tony says, so not as attractive, but I could imagine Tony, like that, and… ”

Peter watches him thoughtfully until it becomes apparent that Gordon has run out of words.

“And did you act on this realisation?” he asks, staring down at Gordon’s phone in his hands.

“I came here.”

“Ah.”

“I think it might be a trick.”

“A trick,” Peter says flatly.

“I think Tony might have done something to me. To make me, you know…”

“Ah, of course.” Peter hands Gordon’s phone back to him. “Yes, we all have the power to turn anyone we like into homosexuals at will, didn’t you know?”

Gordon scowls.

“So he couldn’t have done this to me?”

“I think,” Peter says, slowly, “that you probably did it to yourself.”

They look at each other a long moment.

“Gordon,” Peter says softly, as though to a skittish animal, “why did you come _here_?”

Gordon looks down at the black, blank screen of his phone. Why does he ever go to Peter? He needs rescuing. He needs answers. He needs an anchor. He needs someone who hears the things he can’t bear to say.

“Well,” he says. “It’s a difficult situation. You’re good at that.”

Peter nods, as though in response to the reasons Gordon hadn’t admitted as much as to the one he had.

They sit in silence together. Peter is watching him, but it’s not uncomfortable. Gordon often suspects Peter of being able to watch him from miles and countries and oceans away; it’s almost more reassuring to see him actually doing it. His head feels empty as though full of static, wondering what to do. He had hoped, secretly, irrationally, that Peter would tell him to stop being paranoid, that it was bound to be a side effect of the medication or… something.

“I don’t want to be gay, Peter,” he says, finally. “The politics are awful.”

“That’s true. The TUC panel on Pride alone is a nightmare.”

“Is that a real thing?” he asks, shocked.

“No.”

Gordon almost smiles again.

“I don’t know if you’re gay, Gordon. You might be, or you might just have a weak spot for Tony. Or anything in between. It’s not for me to say.”  

“Who gets to decide?”

Peter grins.

“You.”

“But I don’t _know_!”

“No, but you need to work it out for yourself. I can’t just deliver an edict. I’m not the Pope. I can’t even send you before a gay court and get a ruling.”

Gordon grimaces.

“You see, the politics of it are awful.” He’s irritated now. “Nothing’s objective. What am I supposed to do with _work it out yourself_?”

“It’s all anyone ever gets,” Peter says, with a shrug.

“We should–”

“Listen, _you_ can go home and devise a brilliant system of mathematically determining your sexuality and totally revolutionise our understanding of sexual attraction,” Peter interrupts, not without fondness. “But I need some sleep.”

Gordon wants more advice, but Peter looks exhausted, and with the adrenaline wearing off he realises that he’s tired, too. He yawns and lies back on the couch.

“What’re you doing?” Peter asks, confused.

“I can’t go home,” Gordon explains, and Peter blinks. “Peter, _he’s_ there.”

“Right,” says Peter, “and you can’t risk seeing him lest you trip and fall mouth-first on his cock?”

Gordon just glares in response, and Peter exhales in frustration.

“You know some of us haven’t slept with everyone they’ve had a crush on?”

“Some of us have more crushes than others,” Gordon snaps.

“Oh yes, more than once a decade, how utterly depraved of me,” Peter retorts, voice a shade higher, then sighs, eyes crinkling into the little lines that appear when he’s upset. “For a good man, you can be terribly unsympathetic, sometimes,” he adds, looking oddly vulnerable.

“Sorry,” Gordon says, quietly. It’s not Peter’s fault, he supposes. Perhaps neither of them really _want_ to want Tony.

Peter, for the first time that night, actually appears surprised.

“It’s fine. You can sleep here, Gordon, and you can avoid Tony for as long as you like, but at some point you’re going to have to work out what you want.”

 

* * *

 

When he arrives at the office, Harriet is there, waiting for him. She glares at the t-shirt he’s still wearing, unable to go home to retrieve his clothes and risk running into Tony. Worse, his phone has been out of battery since last night, so he can’t even have one of the Eds call Tony and find out where he is.

Harriet is a fine academic, but she's still cross with him, and he doesn’t really want to talk to anyone at all today. He wants to sit in his office and sulk.

“A man left a message for you,” she says, frostily. “Tony Blair. Your husband, _apparently_ , but–” her eyes fall on the ring on Gordon’s finger, and her eyes widen, and she winces. “Sorry. Your husband called. He wants you to call him.”

Gordon frowns.

“You picked up my phone?”

“I didn’t know you were married,” Harriet says, almost apologetically.

“I contain multitudes,” he snaps. “What do you want?”

“I want my student back. Eddie was _fine_ under my supervision,” she says pointedly. Still holding a grudge about that, Gordon thinks irritably. “But no, I’m actually here to make sure you don’t poach any more. Yvette wanted to see you.” She glances at her watch. “She said she had an appointment for–”

There’s a knock at the door, and Harriet smiles slightly.

“Ah, there she is.”

“Come in,” Gordon calls. A small girl with bobbed hair enters. She looks oddly familiar.

“Mr. Brown,” she says. “I’m Yvette. Cooper. Hi, Harriet,” she adds, politely, spotting her supervisor.

“Right,” Gordon agrees, wondering where he’s seen her before.

“I’m told you know me as Yvonne,” she adds, with a slight wry smile.

Ah. The Eds’ girl.

“Tony Blair,” Harriet says, suddenly, from the corner of the room. “Gordon, is that the Tony Blair who prevented forty pregnant women successfully suing for breach of EU regulations and potential damage to the fetus?”

That did sound like Tony.

“Probably,” he agrees, then clears his throat. “Sorry, Yvonne, what did you want?”

“Her name is Yvette.”

“Yvette,” he concedes, desperate for them to _leave._ Yvette smiles awkwardly.

“Look, I know Ed and Ed have been fighting, and I _know_ it’s affected their work because Ed keeps complaining, and I wanted to come and apologise, and to let you know I asked them to put it aside whilst they’re working, and that I think it should be fine, but, well, you know how these things get.”

He doesn’t.

“It’s fine,” he says, because it _has_ affected their work, but that’s the Eds’ fault, not hers. “Have they sorted it out, then?”

She shrugs.

“I think they just needed to talk.”

That sounds horrendous. He’s suddenly glad Yvette has dealt with this. He doesn’t even want to talk to _Tony_ , hates even the idea of talking, hates even thinking about the fact that there might be something to talk to Tony about, but he nods and thanks her and she stands to leave. Harriet’s glare continues to bore into him from the corner.

“Wait,” he calls, suddenly remembering. “Yvette Cooper.” She turns in the doorway. “You wrote the article on second earners, housewives and the minimum wage.”

“Yes.”

“It was good,” he says, smiling as he thinks about it.

“Thanks,” she says, smiling back.

“Would you be interested in doing more work on those lines? I think I could–”

“YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS TO ME, _AGAIN_ , MINUTES AFTER I’VE JUST DISCOVERED THAT YOUR HUSBAND IS AN ANTIFEMINIST SCUMBAG,” Harriet yells.

“Ah. Right. Sorry,” he says, wrong-footed by her fury. “Thank you, Yvette. Harriet.”

He hadn’t been expecting _that_.

He thinks he should go home to Tony now. He's beginning to suspect he’ll never really be ready for the conversation they need to have, so he might as well do it sooner than later.

 

* * *

 

When he goes home, Tony is in the sitting room, but he isn’t alone; there’s a man sat on the sofa, drinking coffee, and Gordon wonders if he should be jealous before he realises that the grave look on Tony’s face can only mean business or a death.

“Gordon, this is John,” he says, when he sees him. “John, this is my, er, this is Gordon.” He nods at the sofa beside him; Gordon sits down next to Tony and the stranger gives him a short nod. He has no idea what the man’s here for, or his relationship to Tony. Perhaps Tony has turned him in, and he’ll be arrested for fraud. Perhaps–

“John was just telling me the news,” Tony says, solemnly, “but I think you should hear too.”

“Right.” He glances over at their guest, still confused. “How can I help?”

Their guest sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“My grandmother,” he says, “who was, er, who was your landlady, I think, she died last week.”

“Right,” Gordon replies. “I’m – I’m sorry to hear that.” John shrugs.

“It’s ok. She was ninety. Long trips aren’t advisable at that age.”

“I’m sorry,” Gordon repeats, dumbly. The surprise is yet to wear off, but he suspects he’ll regret his clumsy replies when it does.

“It’s ok,” the man says, automatically, then adds more sincerely; “She liked you two. Tony and Gordon. I don’t know if she ever mentioned her brother, but I think she was trying to, you know, put things right.”

“She mentioned it.”

He nods.

“Yeah it’s just – just to say, you know, it was important to her and there won’t be any upheavals. We’re not interested in turfing you out and hiking up the rent, your names are on the lease and that still stands.”

“That’s very kind,” says Tony.

“We’re not together,” Gordon blurts out.

He can’t quite say why, but he suddenly feels ashamed of having deceived an old woman. He’d never set out to make her believe anything, but it hadn’t been a kindness. It had been taking advantage. Tony had been right. Again.

Her grandson looks faintly confused.

“Sorry?”

“Tony and I, we’re not together,” Gordon repeats, with more conviction.

“Any more,” Tony interrupts, smoothly. “We’re, er, we’re not together any more. I’m moving out next week.” He offers a slightly pained smile, and Gordon momentarily forgets his confession, admiring Tony’s acting.

“Oh.” John hesitates a moment. “I’m, er, I’m sorry.”

“I should move out too,” Gordon offers. “So that it can go to someone your grandmother would have wanted it to.”

They’re making him uncomfortable, Gordon realises; he’s adopted a soft voice, as though _they_ were the ones who had lost a relative.

“Yeah, but hey, listen. I don’t know want to pry, but just don’t let this affect, you know, anything. You can take your time.”

“We will,” Tony assures him, and are Tony’s eyes _damp_ , fuck, and he’s got control of the conversation, too, and Gordon doesn’t know whether he hates him or admires him or wants him more.

“I’m sorry,” Gordon says a final time. “She was very kind. To people she didn’t need to be kind to.”

This prompts Tony to put a hand on his back, a consoling gesture, and Gordon would regret it, but it makes John smile.

“Thank you. For everything. I’ll be going,” he says, and shakes Tony’s hand on the way out.

Gordon wants to tell him more, then wonders how he could possibly explain _I might be gay, or only gay when it comes to Tony, but Tony doesn’t sleep with men any more, and I didn’t think I wanted to, but she thought we did, and that’s why we’ve been living together for weeks and we shared a bed and now I think I’m probably attracted to Tony after all._

By the time he’s finished ruminating over all of this, Tony has produced a bottle of very expensive whisky that is almost certainly not Gordon’s from the kitchen; he pours generous measures for them both, sets the bottle on the table, and says nothing. He doesn’t have to. They drain the first glasses in two swallows, then work their way through the bottle more slowly, Gordon turning over the great clamouring mass of his thoughts. Eventually, not talking becomes worse than talking, so he pulls at the thread of one of the things he wants to tell Tony and unspools it until he can find the words.

“I haven’t been honest with you,” he says.

“Ah, well,” Tony says, half-smiling. “Join the club.”

“What?” Gordon asks, startled.

“I got fired. Three days ago. You remember Friday, when you got home early and I was asleep on the couch? Yeah.”

“Christ. Why?”

“Ah. This is the funny bit,” Tony says, smile turning wry and just a shade self-deprecating. “I wrote out the bit in the fourth clause in the firm’s statutes that guaranteed redundancy packages to employees of any length of employment.”

“That’s–”

“Yeah, I know, so we only fulfilled the legal minimum, but nobody could tell in the contracts because of some wizardry we did with the pension scheme, which was so successful they used it all over the place. I made a shedload of money. Clever me.” The self-deprecation seems a little more sincere now.  “So yes, last Friday, three weeks before I hit the new two-year legal minimum threshold that would entitle me to the _absurd_ amount of redundancy money they would owe me - as a result of introducing said threshold - they kick me out.”

“Cunts,” Gordon mutters, mostly because they _are_ cunts, but also because they’ve kicked Tony out, and partly because Tony finds it amusing when he swears at anyone but Tony. It works; Tony is visibly struggling to hide a smile.

“Yeah, well,” he says, shrugging. “The annoying bit, actually, was that they’d already hired my replacement – some plastic fuck called Dave with a pink face and a massive forehead – already at my desk. And, you know, I don’t mind wondering if I’m doing the right thing. Everyone wonders that, and nobody knows for sure. But I hated being _replacable_ ,” he concludes, looking up at Gordon with an honesty likely born of the whisky. “I felt irrelevant.”

Gordon isn't sure what to say to that.

“I think I might be gay,” he offers.

“Yeah, you are,” Tony agrees immediately. “Obviously.”

Oh, the little _shit_.

“Fuck you, Tony,” he mutters, reflexively. “I was being serious.”

“So was I,” Tony agrees, smiling widely now. “Very gay. All those fights you’ve picked with me?” He laughs at Gordon’s expression. “Peter and I had a bet, actually, that before you were forty you’d have a bisexual crisis and end up in a gay bar, getting fucked by four leather daddies at once.”

Gordon frowns. That seems far too specific a scenario to constitute a proper bet. He’s not even sure what a leather daddy _is_. And more than one person at a time would be… difficult logistically, he suspects.

“You can talk, Mr. Dole Queue,”  he retorts rather half-heartedly.

“Sorry,” Tony says, hands up in mock-apology, and he’s still laughing. “It was fairly obvious though, Gordon.”

“I like women!” he protests.

“Well, who doesn’t?” Tony says, shrugging again, and then considers. “Well, my clients normally didn’t, but that was more about–”

“Corporate greed,” Gordon finishes for him automatically, then tries to gather his thoughts. “I don’t think– I don’t really know what I am. I’ve never thought about it before. I think I thought it would kill me.”

“You still look pretty alive to me,” Tony replies, eyes shining in a way that makes Gordon’s skin feel warm.

“Yeah,” he concedes, reluctantly. When he speaks again, his voice is shaking slightly. “Did you really know all the time?”

“Yeah, of course. Remember St. Andrews?”

He does.

“You said you’d– that you would sleep with me if I asked,” Gordon says slowly. “But I’d have to ask. I thought you were just… joking. Being you.”

Tony sighs.

“I _was_ just being me. Being me means never having to proposition anyone unless they’re a cross repressed left-wing genius.”

“You think I’m a genius?”

“If you ever mention that again I’ll set Alastair on you.”

They both laugh, this time.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, heart thumping

“Well,” says Tony, eyes sparkling. “You are very clever.”

“No,” Gordon corrects, too nervous to smile. “What you said in St. Andrews.”

He wonders where he is, here; this is the unknown. He’s walked to the edge of all the maps he has, and probably only Tony knows whether he's about to fall off the edge of the world or not.

“Ah,” Tony whispers, eyes bright and expectant. “There’s only one way to find out.”

He was silent.

“It won’t kill you, Gordon. It won’t even kill you if I say no,” Tony says, which is wrong, Gordon thinks, it absolutely would, but Tony is better at this and Gordon suddenly realises that he can’t break the habit of trusting Tony.

“Do you want to?” he asks, the swooping sickness of a long fall thudding through him.

“Yes,” Tony says, simply, immediately, tenderly. “Very much, you fucking idiot.”

He leans over and kisses Gordon, soft and then _filthy_ , straddling Gordon’s lap, hands on his hips both possessive and tender, as though he already knows they’ll be doing this again many, many times, as though it’s just like everything else about them, both competitive and incomparable.

And that being the case, for today he just gives in.  

 

* * *

 

It’s an odd year, as years go.

It takes them a couple of months to call the sex _dating_ , longer still to stop pretending to not be exclusive, more time again to stop pretending they even want anyone but each other. The world in which they exist continues to demand they spend more time apart than the occasional interaction with supermarket staff, but though fall-out from the bedroom and the bickering spills over into every corner of their lives, nobody else is ever really allowed in. They close doors and argue and think and joke and compete and fuck behind them.

Peter, betraying only the slightest traces of amusement, brings him brochures with whimsical titles like _Gay is Ok_ and _Bi is Fine_ , and he reads them all, and never mentions them. It’s irrelevant, he decides finally. He’s never going to be able to be with anyone but Tony any more.

It’s at Tony’s insistence that he finally leaves academia for politics, and is happier. It’s at Gordon’s insistence that Tony transitions to head the legal team of an international charity, and makes slightly less money, and appears on the 10 O’Clock News rather more, and begins to sleep properly again. Gordon tells him it’s the lack of a guilty conscience, and Tony insists it’s due to the copious amounts of sex, and Gordon is too embarrassed to pursue the debate.

They stay in Gordon’s flat. Tony’s things are already there, after all. Their new lives don’t kill them, even when Gordon spends an entire election campaign living on bananas and KitKats and coffee. In some ways, he thinks, his life is better, apart from the picture of Tony in the bedroom which Tony keeps putting back up after Gordon keeps taking it down.

The papers come by the morning post one Saturday; he slides them from the envelope and looks down at them for a long time before returning to the bedroom, where Tony is sprawled out on the bed in only his pants, cheerfully eating an almond croissant.

“I want to know,” Gordon says seriously, “if you’d be willing to marry me. As a favour,” he adds.

On the bed, Tony beams like fucking sunshine.

  


  
  
  


 


End file.
